Research Summaries

Back Managing Materiel Distribution in an Uncertain Environment

Fiscal Year 2019
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department NPS Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Atkinson, Michael P.
Kress, Moshe
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary Logisticians aboard USN ships must manage the resupply process for many commodities in a time-sensitive environment. Each demanded item has its own priority, random lead-time, and supply chain. When an order is placed, the item proceeds through its supply chain to the final destination using various modes of transportation. The goal of the resupply process is to satisfy as much demand for high priority items as quickly as possible. Even with perfect information and no uncertainty, determining an effective resupply plan is a challenge. An extra complicating factor is the possibility that random shocks may disrupt the various supply chains. Some shocks may only impact a small number of items. Other shocks may affect a large number of items; for example, bad weather may shut down an airport. The impact of these real-time shocks might not be readily accessible and digestible to planners in the limited time available to produce the daily resupply order. This project will develop models and algorithms to generate a resupply plan given demands, priorities, supply chain characteristics, and potential shocks.

Research Questions:
What are the measures of effectiveness/performance?
What impact does the last-mile have on the analysis?
What is the impact of “fast lanes” in the supply chains?
Given demands for all ships in theater, how should items from a theater “hub” be sent to ships?

Research Methodology: Examine demand-side data, such as demand frequency, demand quantity, and priority. From the supply-side, we need data on the supply chain of each item. The underlying mathematical model may relate to a multi-commodity temporal network flow model. Ships can represent demand nodes that require different commodities. The items originate at supply nodes and travel through transshipment nodes to satisfy demand. Shocks to the system may eliminate some transshipment nodes or increase the lead-times.

Deliverables: Student thesis, final report, code and algorithms.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal