Abstract

What if someone were to furnish you with a Ferrari and pay for all the fuel, tires, insurance, and maintenance? How would you drive the car? Surprisingly this is what happens in the United States (US) military. The services (Army, Navy, Air Forces, and Marine Corps) provide forces to regional commanders and finance the fuel, maintenance, personnel, and supplies required to operate these forces. For example, in the US Navy, commanders decide the policy for sequencing replenishment missions to combat ships. Then, a group of 38 personnel manually produces a sequence of supply missions for the next 1–3 weeks. Anomalies such as the inadvertent creation of multiple supply missions to the same combat ship or the inadvertent omission of a combat ship from the schedule are identified through discussions among the schedulers, supply ships, and combat ships. Any schedule shortcomings are made up for in execution by increasing the speed of the supply ships and increasing fuel usage.