Cutting the frills and the costs: Concerns about the high cost of U.S. defense systems procurement has prompted a proposal that emphasizes unit production cost

It may become just another buzz word, but its coiners hope not. “Design to cost” (DTC), a term that originated within the Dept. of Defense, has been embraced and elaborated as a concept by a task force of the Defense Science Board. The charter of the group was implicit in its title: “Task Force on Reducing Costs of Defense Systems Acquisition.” Under the chairmanship of J. Fred Bucy, Jr., executive vice president of Texas Instruments Incorporated, the task force´s members were chosen to include those having a wide variety of experience in commercial industry. In a report prepared during 1973 at the request of the Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (ODDR&E), the task force made several recommendations to the Department of Defense which it urged DOD to implement, or to use as goals for cost reduction. Already, as a result of the report, several directives concerning implementation have been issued by DOD. But to equate this action with widespread acceptance or even understanding of DTC would be a mistake. At EASCON last fall, a panel chaired by Jacques S. Gansler, assistant director for planning for ODDR&E, discussed the proposed technique.