Crisis Airlift Management: Effective Scheduling

摘要

This is a report on the basis, data, findings, and models developed for USTransportation Command and Headquarters Air Mobility Command. Focusing on the dynamic scheduling problem that arises during management of airlift assets into space-constrained airfields during a crisis, this research explains the conditions surrounding this event, discusses several areas of potential cross-functional applications, presents analysis of current performance, and provides several modeling possibilities for schedule efficiency. Past research in the Flow Management Problem (an airline flow control issue) is extensive, but specific applications in crisis airlift are long in coming, primarily due to the complexity of the environment. This complexity is restricted in this initial research with an iterative approach providing for relaxation of those restrictions to present a more representative model. The model presented in this research is a variable set of feeding channels into a single queue with interaction and stochastic behavior serviced by a variably capacitated server. Initial findings include a high variance to mean ratio resulting in poor schedule performance. The products of this research are several tables and charts designed to aid planners in the development of executable schedules.