CALCE MOCA Tool Wins 2002 University of Maryland Information Sciences Invention of the Year

April 23, 2003 - The University of Maryland’s Office of Technology Commercialization selected the CALCE MOCA (Mitigation of Obsolescence Cost Analysis) software tool as its Invention of the Year for 2002 in the information science category, University of Maryland Press Release.  MOCA co-inventors Dr. Peter Sandborn and Pameet Singh (CALCE Ph.D. student) received a cash award and plaques at an awards luncheon held at the University of Maryland on April 23, 2003.

MOCA is a design tool for determining the part obsolescence impact on life cycle sustainment costs for the long field life electronic systems based on future production projections, maintenance requirements and part obsolescence forecasts. Based on a detailed cost analysis model, MOCA determines the optimum design refresh plan during the field-support-life of the product. The design refresh plan consists of the number of design refresh activities, their respective calendar dates and content to minimize the life cycle sustainment cost of the product. The methodology supports user determined short- and long-term obsolescence mitigation approaches on a per part basis, variable look-ahead times associated with design refreshes, and allows for inputs to be specified as probability distributions that can vary with time. Outputs from this analysis can optionally be used as inputs to the PRICE Systems PRICE H/L commercial software tools for predicting life cycle costs of systems.