Exploring Early Stage Cost-Estimation Methods Using Off-the-Shelf Tools: A Preliminary Study

Cost analysis is challenging for multiple reasons, one of which is the lack of historical data due to proprietary issues, or significant work required to make it useful for a particular application and domain of interest. In addition, to support system engineering methods such as Design Space Exploration, both component- and engine-level costs must be supported. This paper presents the results of a preliminary study on a tool that can be used to estimate the development cost for a set of airplane-engine architecture models using publicly available off-the-shelf tools. Our tool focuses on supporting complex system engineering tool chains and methods that require strong interoperability with different tools in a networked environment. The tool, through its architecture, allows the inclusion of supports for early stage cost analysis without directly using historical data, and both system- and component-level cost generations. We describe our approach, tools, estimation process and possible use cases.