Optimal depot level maintenance planning

Abstract

The Marine Corps is replacing its aging fleet of M6OAl Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) with MiAl MBTs. By 1997, fielding of the new tanks will be complete with 403 MiAls located throughout the continental United States and onboard ships of the Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons Already operating on very slim budgets, the planning and management of costly depot- level maintenance for the MiAl is of concern to the Marine Corps. However, there is currently no model or other management tool available to analyze the effects of various maintenance policies. The goal of this thesis is to develop such a model to aid the Marine Corps in establishing an effective and efficient maintenance policy for the tank fleet. Specifically, a linear integer programming model with an embedded multi-commodity network structure is formulated to solve the tank maintenance problem. The objective of the optimal tank maintenance model is to maximize tank readiness while considering operational as well as policy constraints. As a tool, the optimal tank maintenance model can be used to quantity the effects of alternate maintenance proposals.