Both the income from, and the cost of equipment are strongly dependent on Life Cycle Cost Management

The life cycle cost of a system does not start at system procurement, but at the moment that somebody has the idea that such system should exist. Such idea is then typically passed on to a designer / design team, who starts designing the system (through the generic design phases of (i) conceptual design, (ii) preliminary design, and (iii) detailed design). The design process normally also includes the system development process, involving the construction and testing of prototypes.

These early stages of the life cycle are critically important, because a very high proportion of the total system life cycle costs are committed at these early stages through the design decisions that are made.

Our aim is then to studying life cycle costing, so to attain an understanding of how to minimise the costs over the life cycle of the equipment, firstly through design inputs, but also through meaningfully influencing the maintenance and operation of the equipment over its operational life.