Date of Award

6-2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Operational Sciences

First Advisor

John E. Bell, PhD

Abstract

In the F-16 fighter community it is believed that the flying schedule can make or break a wing's maintenance effort. Nevertheless, there is no published scientific support behind many commonly used maintenance scheduling philosophies. The problem is that a generally accepted overall scheduling philosophy to improve the long term health of the fleet does not exist. The purpose of this research is tri-fold: to identify the most important scheduling philosophies, to identify the most meaningful metrics that capture the long term health of the fleet and maintenance effectiveness, and to compare the various philosophies using the performance measures to help maintenance managers choose the most appropriate one. A stochastic simulation model was generated to model the sortie generation process, and a full factorial Design of Experiment was used to identify statistically significant differences among the proposed scheduling philosophies. The results of the study show that the "3 waves Monday through Thursday and 1 wave on Friday" maintenance scheduling philosophy seems to outperform the other philosophies regardless of the sortie surge level or the time between landing and takeoff. This philosophy is also less sensitive than the alternative philosophies in sortie level and time between landing and take-off changes.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GLM-ENS-05-12

DTIC Accession Number

ADA436130

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