| The objective of this research is to provide a generic, easy-to-use decision support model to assist owners, managers, and comptrollers in making replacement decisions. The model is all-encompassing in the sense that it takes into consideration all revenues and costs involved in choosing among alternatives available to the decision maker. The influence of parameters such as taxes, depreciation, resale values, productivity and the age of the system have been included in the model. The model can therefore be applied to compare an aging system, at any point in its life cycle, with any new replacement candidate.; An actual case has been selected to demonstrate the application of the model. Extensive research has been done to collect information and statistics on the costs and revenues of the commercial tractor trucks and on advancements in product and process technologies. How costs and revenues have been influenced by such advances is also treated.; The model is then used to illustrate its decision support capability in determining the moment to replace the system or to predict when the replacement should take place.; The applicability of the model as a marketing tool and as an engineering analysis instrument has also been explored.; Suggestions for future research to advance the application of the model to other systems and to other areas, such as integration of the model with logistic support systems, accounting systems, and life cycle cost estimations, have been made. |
