Optimizing procurement planning of Navy ships and aircraft

Abstract

The United States Navy Chief of Naval Operations Assessment Division (N81) is responsible for planning long-range capital expenditure on ships, submarines and aircraft. This planning is complicated, involves billions of dollars over decades, and determines future Navy capability. Navy force structure analysts have to balance: yearly budgets; requirements, current inventory, and procurement options for ships, submarines, and aircraft; and capacity and workforce levels of shipyards and factories. N81 Navy analysts currently use the Extended Planning Annex/Total Obligated Authority (a spreadsheet that estimates the financial impact of any complete future plan) to assist them with their complex planning. The Capital Investment Planning Aid (CIPA) is a prototypic optimization model, limited in scale, previously developed to demonstrate the benefits of augmenting EPA/TOA with optimization. This thesis introduces Generalizing Procurement Planning for Naval Ships and Aircraft (GENSA), which extends CIPA. GENSA is tested with a 30-year planning horizon with 29 mission areas, 45 ship classes, 39 aircraft types, 13 production facilities, and four categories of money. A current base case and an excursion demonstrate GENSA can be used to address exigent issues optimally.