Heuristics in Global Combat Logistics Force Operational Planning
Abstract
The United States Navy (USN) globally deploys to protect and sustain a peaceful international system of interdependent trade, information, and social networks through a spectrum of capabilities, including humanitarian aid missions, multinational engagement, maritime domain awareness, and combat operations. To sustain maritime forces at sea, the Combat Logistics Force (CLF) provides logistical support via Underway Replenishments (UNREP) that maximizes deployed battle group on-station-time and endurance. The author presents a heuristic algorithm extension to the legacy CLF planning tool to plan Combat Logistics Force shuttle ship schedules to support forward deployed U.S. Navy battle groups operating globally. This algorithm prioritizes each battle group's replenishment requirements based on supply and determines an effective Combat Logistics Force shuttle ship pairing to execute at-sea replenishment. This determination is based on a variety of factors including range between shuttle ship and battle group, on hand commodity levels, and shuttle availability. The Replenishment-At-Sea schedules provided by the heuristic are face-valid, and can be used as initial feasible solutions for more complex and time-consuming algorithms. The legacy CLF model relies on the CPLEX solver engine and integer linear programming algorithms to determine optimal scheduling solutions. However, each solve run is time-consuming, with a processing time for larger scenarios requiring between 2-10 hours for completion, and can require 5 minutes to an hour just to find an initial feasible solution. On the contrary, a heuristic algorithm can provide initial feasible solutions in a matter of seconds.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA518533
Entities
People
- Andres Diaz
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School