Advanced Planning and Scheduling in the United States Air Force Depot-Level Maintenance

In the post cold war environment, the rapid deployment of combat capability is critical. Deployment lift capability is limited, however, so the real-time selection of the optimal combat asset mix that balances capability provided and sustainment required has become paramount. In this model, the value of a force mix is determined by the sum of the individual weapon system suitabilities against their assigned missions. The value is constrained by the numerical limits on the items required to create and support the force mix, and the lift required to move these items. The research considered heuristic and complete enumeration methods against the problem structure to develop a decision support model that expedites the selection of the best overall force mix. War planners are provided a decision support tool that objectively compares alternative force mix packages and selects the optimal asset mix in a reasonable amount of time while explicitly considering logistics constraints. This demonstrates the feasibility of an approach that integrates intelligence, operations, and logistics issues into a single decision support and planning tool for force mix decisions