Testing Policies and Key Influences on Long-Term Aircraft Fleet Management Using Designed Simulation Experiments

摘要

We apply a designed simulation experiment approach to a model of a fleet of military aircraft. The model represents a fleet of naval combat helicopters over its life and includes flying rates, all types of maintenance, and embarked and ashore components. The fleet aims to achieve ongoing flying requirements embarked and ashore while also achieving a balanced load of flying hours across the fleet and for each aircraft. We test six types of fleet management policies within the model, relating to the allocation of flying rates and maintenance effort, cross-training of maintainers, sharing resources between colocated squadrons, and two policy heuristics for achieving fleet management goals and requirements. We also include a number of input variables (i.e., factors) regarding flying rates and the unknown failure rates and repair times associated with unscheduled maintenance. The simulation experiment thus incorporates continuous and discrete factors, as well as categorical factors for the six fleet management policy types. We demonstrate the power of the simulation experimental design approach in revealing not just the key factors and policies, but the extent of their relative influence. This allows us to advise fleet managers where to direct their focus to obtain best performance over a fleet life.