OptCrew: Optimized Manning and Crew Design Tools for Future Surface and Undersea Platforms Navy SBIR FY2009.1 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2009.1 Topic No.: N091-071 Topic Title: OptCrew: Optimized Manning and Crew Design Tools for Future Surface and Undersea Platforms Proposal No.: N091-071-0325 Firm: OptTek Systems, Inc. 1919 Seventh Street Boulder, Colorado 80302 Contact: James Kelly Phone: (303) 447-3255 Web Site: www.opttek.com Abstract: Recognizing the need to reduce manpower costs overall, the Navy has undertaken new strategies in weapon systems design, with a focus on significantly reducing manpower and workload requirements. The necessary next step is to develop OptCrew, a suite of tools and models to help identify the optimal design for future platforms, providing a balance of system capability with human affordability without sacrificing mission effectiveness. OptCrew will help manpower planners identify high workload drivers and other design aspects that drive excessive manpower costs, such as lengthy training pipelines or maintenance requirements that may be workload-intensive or require training-intensive skill sets. Furthermore, these will be linked to specific operational contexts in order to formulate the appropriate metrics, necessary for the quantitative analyses of the proposed alternatives. Benefits: The anticipated benefits of this research and development includes potential to:  Design a more effective approach (simulation/optimization) for system-wide applications  Develop and market commercial grade software that may be applied to other high-risk, highly complex environments both in the public and private sectors  Become very appealing to attract downstream funding from venture capital firms and business alliance partners  Add to the body of knowledge in simulation optimization that may be leveraged to permit additional research and development Return