"FST - a good investment"

The realities of a TPS\´s development project costing across the life cycle can be summed up simply by the cliche\´: "pay me now or pay me later". Everything costs something - there are no free lunches. However, the good news is, we can often find an assortment of cost-effective \´lunches.\´ And we can control them - or at least, to some extent, mitigate them to manageable levels. Ideally, we are charged to manage to the life cycle - directed to minimize the life cycle cost. It is always our charge to manage the cost over the life cycle - not just under our watch. In this paper we focus qualitatively, a bit, on one excellent cost management opportunity in the investment in the FST, as a full member of the acquisition team for offloaded TPSs as well as during the ISE phase of a system\´s life. It gets the ultimate "go to person(s)" involved, up front and early, in the design, development and eventual delivery.