Enhancement of Winter Maintenance Material Ordering and Inventory

11296272009Final ReportPDFTech ReportFHWA/OH-2009/1Deicing chemicalsGuidelinesMaterialsWinter maintenanceInventory controlHighwaysMaintenance and PreservationMaterialsI30: MaterialsI62: Winter MaintenanceOhioUnited StatesUnited States. Federal Highway AdministrationCiarallo, Frank W.Brown, NicholasNiranjan, SumanWayne State UniversityOhio. Dept. of Transportation. Office of Research and Development.United States. Federal Highway AdministrationUS Transportation CollectionExpenditures for winter maintenance materials total nearly $20 million annually. During an average winter ODOT uses approximately 666,000 tons of rock salt and has the capacity to store roughly 617,000 tons of material at various locations. Each year, each county in Ohio establishes a contract through ODOT with a salt vendor before the winter season and that vendor supplies all garages in the county for the entire season. In order to develop a systematic salt inventory management strategy that achieves the statewide goals for safety, this project developed ordering guidelines for each county that specifies when to order and how much to order based on an (R, S)-inventory guideline. These guidelines take into account the history of usage and deliveries in a county, as well as the monthly variation in usage. The inventory guidelines developed for the different areas of Ohio are based on a weather regression model for the major cities/counties in the state relating usage to weather. The guidelines were tested and refined using a computer simulation methodology. The resulting guidelines are compared to the current ODOT guidelines for inventory, as well as compared to the county storage capacities to develop recommendations. The project also developed design concepts for inventory monitoring to support effective ordering