An improved inventory control model for the Brazilian Navy Supply System

Abstract

Inventory managers in the Brazilian Navy for decades have faced the difficult task of establishing policies and controls to maintain readiness at the highest possible level. The task is difficult because the inventory system contains more than 500,000 items, and many of these items must be procured from overseas. Every year, inventory managers must allocate millions of dollars to buy inventory to support the fleet, and until recently the process has been almost entirely devoid of algorithmic support. We propose a new method for allocating a budget to buy inventory items in the Brazilian Navy. We compare our method with the current one and with an improved version of it. Our results suggest that our method could significantly improve supply readiness in the Brazilian Navy.