FORECASTING CRITICAL AIRCRAFT LAUNCH AND RECOVERY EQUIPMENT (ALRE) COMPONENTS' DEMAND

Demand signals across the Navy’s NIMITZ Class Carrier (CVN) Aircraft Launch and Recovery Equipment (ALRE) market-basket are highly erratic and do not fit neatly into the traditional demand-based sparing construct. This causes the Naval Supply Systems Command Weapons Systems Support (NAVSUP WSS) planning efforts to continually lag behind requirements, with material often arriving late-to-need. This project attempts to develop a comprehensive and more reliable ALRE material requirement forecast model. To accomplish this effectively, a comprehensive list of historical CVN ALRE demand data were analyzed in order to identify any correlation between ALRE demand and a ship’s operating phase status, and to identify whether that correlation directly drives ALRE demand. The analysis begins by collecting historical CVN ALRE demand data and identifying the improvements for the current forecasting model. After a complete analysis of the current forecasting model, we utilized multiple linear regression and evaluated various forecasting methods as the best available methods for developing/discovering an optimized and robust forecasting method. In conclusion, the extremely low demand quantities of critical ALRE components continue to make forecasting extremely unreliable, but we believe NAVSUP can improve the accuracy of ALRE demand forecast by adapting a flexible forecasting system.NAVSUPhttp://archive.org/details/forecastingcriti1094561212Lieutenant Commander, United States NavyLieutenant, United States NavyLieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited