Using incentives to improve maintainability

The objective of this thesis was to determine if contract incentives were appropriate for use in Dept. of Defense contracts for the purpose of motivating defense contractors to improve the maintainability of weapon systems under design. To accomplish the objective it was necessary to review the components of maintainability to determine appropriate targets for the incentives and to study the concepts and issues involved in the use of incentives to motivate contractor performance. The conclusions were based in part of the responses obtained during interviews conducted with Government representatives and engineering, contracting, and corporate and program management personnel from the defense industry. In addition, the incentive program in the case of the F/A-18 aircraft was reviewed and analyzed to determine the reason for its success.