Improved Technology Readiness Assessment Framework for System-of-Systems from a System Integration Perspective

Abstract

The military of the Republic of Korea utilizes technology readiness assessment (TRA) to quantitatively evaluate the maturity of domestic technologies. TRA is a key tool for determining the research and development potential in the country. As TRA employs hardware (HW)-oriented technology readiness levels (TRLs), it is suitable for independently assessing individual technologies. However, it has limitations in terms of evaluation from a system-integration perspective. Additionally, the results of checklist-based assessments are highly likely to involve subjectivity, which may yield sparse quantitative insights. This study proposes an enhanced TRA framework in which TRA procedures and criteria are redefined from the system-integration perspective. A framework that can overcome the limitations of the current TRL and TRA frameworks and enable easier, more intuitive assessments is developed. The proposed framework distinguishes between a technology element and a critical technology element (CTE) in terms of HW, software (SW), and interface (IF) and redefines TRLs. Under this framework, TRA is performed according to the TRLs that are redefined in terms of HW, SW, and IF; considering risk management, the lowest evaluation value is used as the system maturity level. The proposed CTE selection method minimizes external evaluator interventions by considering the quantitative goals of the key required operational capabilities, development difficulties, and applications of commercial off-the-shelf technologies. The effectiveness of this framework is confirmed through a case study involving three systems of systems. The results of this study can inspire research at the framework level and contribute to the improvement of existing TRA systems.