Cost-Benefit Analysis of a Bridge to Integrate the Management of Technical Information for Producing Technical Manuals and Training Courses

This report describes an Institute for Defense Analyses IDA cost-benefit analysis of a project to improve the Navys Integrated Logistics Support ILS. The project involves integrating, or bridging, the management of technical information for producing Navy technical manuals and training courses. The Bridge project achieved the integration by designing new software and proposing new technical and business procedures for managing the technical information. The project was part of the Reduction in Total Ownership Cost RTOC program conducted by the Office of the Secretary of Defense OSD. The study conducted separate cost-benefit analyses for two perspectives. The OSD perspective recognizes OSDs broad interest in seeing whether the new software and technical and business processes that constitute the Bridge would lead to cost savings if implemented by the Navy. This analysis found that the Bridge would achieve net benefits-cost savings for producing technical manuals and training courses that exceed the costs of implementing the Bridge. The Program Office perspective focuses on their individual systems of interest and concentrates exclusively on the benefit side- whether the Bridge would save money in producing future technical manuals and training courses for their systems of interest. The benefits proved positive.