Effects of Alternative Performance Criteria upon Composition of Air Transportable Spare Parts Kits

Airlift capacity is a definitive factor in the success of large-scale military operations. History proves that the demand for airlift soon exceeds its capacity during simultaneous deployment of forces. Therefore good solutions to the airlift capacity problem are important. This thesis contributes to the resolution of this problem by seeking ways to reduce readiness spare parts packages (RSPs) deployed for Air Force squadrons through addition of airlift criteria into the RSP selection process. We find that item cost, weight, and volume are three important criteria for RSP computations. We then offer a method for implementing these three criteria in the RSP selection process. We evaluate our method using an experimental design based on the USAF Aircraft Sustainability Model. The experiment results show that RSP sizes can be reduced, but typically at a high increase in cost. However in some cases the three criteria used together can achieve smaller cheaper RSPs than the current USAF approach (using only cost-based analysis) can produce. These results suggest that this method should be adopted for the RSP selection process, to enable cost vs. airlift requirement tradeoffs and to achieve cost reductions on selected RSPs