Leverage Artificial Intelligence to Learn, Optimize, and Win (LAILOW) for the Marine Maintenance and Supply Complex System

Abstract

Marines in combat require a rapid and flexible logistics capability responsive to the 21st century battlefield. The USMC’s supply and maintenance chain receives data feed from a long chain, including: maintenance, requisition, transportation, and finance processes, activities, and decisions. Such a complex enterprise needs trusted deep analytics, including machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods to achieve automation, improve readiness, and win in unexpected environment. In this paper, we first review an overall framework of leveraging artificial Intelligence to learn, optimize, and win (LAILOW) for a complex enterprise, and then show how the LAILOW framework is applied to the USMC supply and maintenance chain as a test case. We first show a collection of supervised machine-learning algorithms, from an open-source based on the python ML library scikit-learn and the Soar reinforcement learning algorithm, to predict business metrics such as predict probability of fail (POF). We then show an unsupervised machine learning method lexical link analysis (LLA) to discover associative and sequential patterns, combined with predictive models in a game-theoretic set up using the coevolutionary algorithms in the LAILOW framework, where demand perturbations introduced by high-impact and low-occurrence items propagate to the whole system. We show the LAILOW framework as predictive and simulation tool using data sets extracted from operational databases to improve total readiness, agility, and resilience for the USMC logistics enterprise. To show the feasibility of the LAILOW, we have sampled data for a specific Table of Authorized Material Control Number (TAMCN, 2020) from the database Global Combat Support System-Marine Corps (GCSS-MC), including service ticket number level attributes related to maintenance data, supply data, and equipment usage data. The sample data set contains 2065 service numbers/tickets, where 599 (29%) have more than 65 days (65 days is the mean value of the days between the open and close dates for the data set), between their opened and closed date, which is the target variable or measure of performance (MOP) for prediction. We found Soar-RL results comparable in predictive accuracy for predicting the MOP. Since Soar-RL is also rule-based and explainable, it was selected and used in a simulation phase integrated with the coevolutionary algorithms. The simulation shows that the logistics solutions, on average, worsens in evolution (in terms of the fitness value), while the opponent, representing logistics tests, on average, improves in evolution in terms of the MOP. The algorithms systematically simulate and discover possible new tests or “vulnerability”, and evolved solutions or “resiliency” are also discovered. Therefore, the LAILOW framework provides a holistic predictive and simulation platform to improve total readiness of a resilient and agile USMC logistics enterprise.