Improvement of Air Mobility Command Airlift Scheduling

Abstract

Abstract : Air Mobility Command provides rapid, global mobility and sustainment for US armed forces and plays a crucial role in humanitarian support operations around the world. Since customer requests for airlift resources to support these missions almost always exceed the supply, effective and efficient scheduling of these resources is critical. This research explores the similarity between Air Mobility Command airlift scheduling and US motor carrier industry scheduling with respect to improving efficiency. It begins with an overview of Air Mobility Command's organization and functional relationships with regard to scheduling of airlift assets and a review of currently fielded airlift modeling and simulation systems. This is followed by a review of the US motor carrier industry with an emphasis on scheduling and efforts to improve efficiency in that industry as well as the results. After reviewing practices employed by the motor carrier industry to improve efficiency, similar methodology is applied to a set of historical airlift missions to measure and attempt to improve the scheduled efficiency of these missions. A measure of efficiency, the operating ratio, is developed through analysis of Air Mobility Command mission numbers. Finally, case study analysis is presented of computer simulated scheduling utilizing various optimized scheduling policies.