Enhancing integration and responsiveness in naval aviation logistics : spares stockage issues

Abstract : This Note discusses current stockage policies and computational techniques in naval aviation and argues that the use of a weapon system availability objective function coupled with multi-echelon optimization techniques could result in substantial improvements in system performance at current levels of investment. A demonstration is included that compares the estimated performance of the stockage posture resulting from an emulation of the Navy's current computational methods with that of alternative methods. They Navy's technique of minimizing the sum of holding plus shortage costs subject to a fill rate constraint is shown to be dominated by each of the alternative computational approaches. Additional research and implementation issues are also discussed.