Concept of Operations Studies (CONOPS) provide tremendous insight into the utility and effectiveness of a proposed design, and allow for many design improvements to be made prior to creation of the first prototype. The CONOPS can provide a clearer definition of the proposed system and numerous detailed examples of the system’s potential use. Capability requirements can be analyzed, as well as proposed Human Machine Interface (HMI) tools and controls. These studies can be converted directly into design modifications and clarifications for system developers, resulting in improved system utility to the customer at initial product launch.
The Sonalysts team has created and refined its process to efficiently create CONOPS and clearly communicate the results. After studying the proposed design capabilities of the future system, scenarios are developed to exercise major functionality under predetermined normal and extreme conditions. Internal and external factors impacting system use are considered and varied in the study, to make the most thorough effort to compensate for all possible operating environments. The final report will mature through an iterative development of the details of the scenarios, study of the proposed design and generation of a more detailed definition of assumed system capabilities. CONOPS output feeds directly into functional and system requirements documents.
