SCHEDULING AMPHIBIOUS CONNECTORS TO DELIVER MULTIPLE COMMODITIES

Abstract

Across the amphibious warfighting community, planners need to quickly develop schedules to deliver multiple supply commodities during ship-to-shore operations. We extend the single-commodity models underpinning the Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) Amphibious Connector Scheduler (MACS) tool to allow amphibious connectors to deliver multiple commodities, such as fuel, food, water, and ammunition. This extension provides amphibious planners with a flexible and versatile decision tool, which is much more operationally relevant compared to the one-commodity variant. Our primary contribution is a temporal network flow model that computes the optimal number of round trips for each connector configuration from the seabase to the shore to achieve both fast delivery and few connector trips. We formulate the optimization problem as a mixed integer linear program, and develop a linear program approximation to solve large-sized problems. Our approach generates several different schedules with different strengths, so the decision maker can choose the one that best meets mission requirements. Through our analysis of complex notional scenarios and a historical case study, we demonstrate the potential of the improved MACS as an amphibious planning tool of the future.