Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.22594/10.22594/DAU.21-866.28.03
Glenn Tolentino, John Wood, S. Riley
During the midst of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a large Navy Working Capital Funded government laboratory transitioned from a traditional on-site/physical daily operational presence to a distributed, virtual maximum telework posture. The direction given in March 2020 was that unless performance of a specific approved tasking was required at the physical workplace, the laboratory workforce was to telework from a safe location while practicing social distancing. To this extent, a majority of the organization’s workforce continued performing the duties associated with their programs and projects in a virtual and secure distributed environment. This new norm certainly raised questions and considerations related to the effectiveness of the workforce while under maximum telework. As a result, two surveys were conducted to assess the perceived work-effectiveness of the organization. The perceived work-effectiveness was assessed at the operational (work unit) level, focusing on project impacts of telework, and from the macroorganizational perspective. The first survey was conducted on a project that was 2 weeks into this virtual maximum telework environment. The second survey was performed one layer above the project at the division level, thereby extending the aperture of the data. Both surveys provided a great deal of information and insight on how project teams perceived work performance and effectiveness during telework. The purpose of the study was to understand the impact of distributed telework in workforce productivity and project success as well as assess workforce perceptions on the effects of telework.
{"title":"Distributed Operations in Response to COVID-19: Assessing Workforce Perceptions of Productivity and Success","authors":"Glenn Tolentino, John Wood, S. Riley","doi":"10.22594/10.22594/DAU.21-866.28.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22594/10.22594/DAU.21-866.28.03","url":null,"abstract":"During the midst of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a large Navy Working Capital Funded government laboratory transitioned from a traditional on-site/physical daily operational presence to a distributed, virtual maximum telework posture. The direction given in March 2020 was that unless performance of a specific approved tasking was required at the physical workplace, the laboratory workforce was to telework from a safe location while practicing social distancing. To this extent, a majority of the organization’s workforce continued performing the duties associated with their programs and projects in a virtual and secure distributed environment. This new norm certainly raised questions and considerations related to the effectiveness of the workforce while under maximum telework. As a result, two surveys were conducted to assess the perceived work-effectiveness of the organization. The perceived work-effectiveness was assessed at the operational (work unit) level, focusing on project impacts of telework, and from the macroorganizational perspective. The first survey was conducted on a project that was 2 weeks into this virtual maximum telework environment. The second survey was performed one layer above the project at the division level, thereby extending the aperture of the data. Both surveys provided a great deal of information and insight on how project teams perceived work performance\u0000and effectiveness during telework. The purpose of the study was to understand the impact of distributed telework in workforce productivity and project success as well as assess workforce perceptions on the effects of telework.","PeriodicalId":443078,"journal":{"name":"Optimizing Operations","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117284919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.22594/10.22594/DAU.20-862.28.03
B. Myers
For fixed wing aircraft within the U.S. Air Force, Operating and Support (O&S) costs encompass a large portion of total life-cycle costs. O&S costs include fuel, maintenance, and engine upgrades. To the authors’ knowledge, no study to date has attempted to empirically quantify the realized effects of new aircraft engines on sustainment costs. Utilizing the Air Force Total Ownership Cost database, they focused on new engines appearing on the C-5s, C-130s, and C-135s. Although narrow in scope, results suggest newer engines have lower fuel costs. Maintenance costs for newer engines were not consistently higher or lower than the engines they replaced, although Contractor Logistics Support was not tracked by engine in this study. We found that savings from improved fuel efficiency tended to be greater than a potential increase in maintenance costs.
{"title":"Quantifying the Effects of Aircraft Engine Upgrades on Operating and Support Costs","authors":"B. Myers","doi":"10.22594/10.22594/DAU.20-862.28.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22594/10.22594/DAU.20-862.28.03","url":null,"abstract":"For fixed wing aircraft within the U.S. Air Force, Operating and Support (O&S) costs encompass a large portion of total life-cycle costs. O&S costs include fuel, maintenance, and engine upgrades. To the authors’ knowledge, no study to date has attempted to empirically quantify the realized effects of new aircraft engines on sustainment costs. Utilizing the Air Force Total Ownership Cost database, they focused on new engines appearing on the C-5s, C-130s, and C-135s. Although narrow in scope, results suggest newer engines have lower fuel costs. Maintenance costs for newer engines were not consistently higher or lower than the engines they replaced, although Contractor Logistics Support was not tracked by engine in this study. We found that savings from improved fuel efficiency tended to be greater than a potential increase in maintenance costs.","PeriodicalId":443078,"journal":{"name":"Optimizing Operations","volume":"72 3-4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133786708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.22594/10.22594/DAU.20-860.28.03
Michael C. Jones, T. Mazzuchi, S. Sarkani
The Department of Defense (DoD) operates a world-wide supply chain, which in 2017 contained nearly 5 million items collectively valued at over $90 billion. Since at least 1990, designing and operating this supply chain, and adapting it to ever-changing military requirements, are highly complex and tightly coupled problems, which the highest levels of DoD recognize as weaknesses. Military supply chains face a wide range of challenges. Decisions made at the operational and tactical levels of logistics can alter the effectiveness of decisions made at the strategic level. Decisions must be made with incomplete information. As a result, practical solutions must simultaneously incorporate decisions made at all levels as well as take into account the uncertainty faced by the logistician. The design of modern military supply chains, particularly for large networks where many values are not known precisely, is recognized as too complex for many techniques found in the academic literature. Much of the literature in supply chain network design makes simplifying assumptions, such as constant per-unit transportation costs regardless of the size of the shipment, the shipping mode selected, the time available for the delivery, or the route taken. This article avoids these assumptions to provide an approach the practitioner can use when designing and adapting supply chain networks. This research proposes a simulation-based optimization approach to find a near-optimal solution to a large supply chain network design problem of the scale faced by a theater commander, while recognizing the complexity and uncertainty that the practicing military logistician must deal with.
{"title":"A Simulation-based Optimization Approach to Logistic and Supply Chain Network Design","authors":"Michael C. Jones, T. Mazzuchi, S. Sarkani","doi":"10.22594/10.22594/DAU.20-860.28.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22594/10.22594/DAU.20-860.28.03","url":null,"abstract":"The Department of Defense (DoD) operates a world-wide supply chain, which in 2017 contained nearly 5 million items collectively valued at over $90 billion. Since at least 1990, designing and operating this supply chain, and adapting it to ever-changing military requirements, are highly complex and tightly coupled problems, which the highest levels of DoD recognize as weaknesses. Military supply chains face a wide range of challenges. Decisions made at the operational and tactical levels of logistics can alter the effectiveness of decisions made at the strategic level. Decisions must be made with incomplete information. As a result, practical solutions must simultaneously incorporate decisions made at all levels as well as take into account the uncertainty faced by the logistician. The design of modern military supply chains, particularly for large networks where many values are not known precisely, is recognized as too complex for many techniques found in the academic literature. Much of the literature in supply chain network design makes simplifying assumptions, such as constant per-unit transportation costs regardless of the size of the shipment, the shipping mode selected, the time available for the delivery, or the route taken. This article avoids these assumptions to provide an approach the practitioner can use when designing and adapting supply chain networks. This research proposes a simulation-based optimization approach to find a near-optimal solution to a large supply chain network design problem of the scale faced by a theater commander, while recognizing the complexity and uncertainty that the practicing military logistician must deal with.","PeriodicalId":443078,"journal":{"name":"Optimizing Operations","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129883016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}