Common Authorized Stockage Lists for the U.S. Army's Brigade Combat Teams
Abstract
When the combat and tactical vehicles in the Army's brigade combat teams (BCTs) break down, maintainers require repair parts to restore their readiness. This can happen quickly if the parts are on hand in the BCTs own Supply Support Activity (SSA). The Army's solution to this equipment readiness challenge is the authorized stockage list (ASL), a carefully calculated list of the repair parts that is periodically recalculated, reviewed, and updated. Each SSA should keep an ASL on hand for the equipment in the supported BCT. In 2016, the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff, G-4 (then General Gustave F. Perna) laid out a vision of common ASLs (CASLs) - that is, single ASLs for each of the three BCT types (armored [ABCT], infantry [IBCT], and Stryker [SBCT]) - that would provide higher ASL performance to (1) better support readiness of critical equipment in high-tempo operations, (2) enable SSA mobility on the battlefield, and (3) reduce the workload required to reconfigure storage locations and redistribute parts that are no longer authorized for stockage. To achieve these objectives, RAND researchers developed a new approach to computing ASLs that fundamentally changed both how the demand history was used and the analytic method. Rather than using the demand history of each BCT for each ASL review, the new approach pools the demand history for repair parts across all BCTs of the same type. Replacing the traditional two-step approach driven by heuristic business rules was a mathematical optimization approach that uses a mixed-integer programming (MIP) algorithm.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 20, 2023
- Accession Number
- AD1191109
Entities
People
- Candice Miller
- Kenneth J. Girardini
- Rick Eden
Organizations
- RAND Corporation