The problem
Where the time was going
As one of just three US Air Force maintenance flight depots, the Ogden Air Logistics Center Aircraft Directorate provides depot repair, modification, and maintenance for major weapons systems. Its current workload mixes the A-10 Warthog, the C-130 Hercules, and the F-16 Falcon, with more than 2,200 civilian and military staff supporting the warfighter.
Each year that workload mix shifts across the three systems, and program managers have to compete for the same facilities and resources to hit their deadlines at reasonable cost. Planning and scheduling were a tedious manual effort, and there was no analytical tool that brought all three weapon systems together at the top level.
The job was further complicated by everything that does not go to plan: late aircraft arrivals, widely varied maintenance requirements, inclement weather, repair materials delivered late, worker turnover, routing obstacles, and a long tail of other bottlenecks.
What we modeled
Mapping the process, then testing the fix
Given that complexity, discrete event simulation was chosen as the best way to weigh different scenarios. The Aircraft Directorate had a model built that could analyze strategic resource allocations and process improvements, and let users change components of the operation to explore what-if questions.
ProcessModel was selected for the build after a structured tool evaluation, on the grounds that it was approachable, flexible, cost effective, and detailed enough to meet the requirements. The result modeled depot maintenance for the A-10, C-130, and F-16 as one open architecture system, so all three fleets could be studied together rather than one at a time.
The result
The proof, and the payoff
Even early in its life, the model has already correctly predicted the current bottlenecks that arise from the system's variability, complexity, and resource constraints, which is the proof that it reflects the real operation.
That gives the Aircraft Directorate a quantitative basis for providing depot maintenance in a timelier, more competitively priced way. The same model is built to serve both long-term strategic plans and near-term tactical decisions, with the next step being a closer look at the most problematic shared resources and back-shop routes.
Part of our work in military and defense.