ATLAS™

The Army Transformation in Logistics And Sustainment (ATLAS™) project, now in Phase II, is chartered with developing a unified modeling, simulation, and experimentation framework to assess the impacts of  current and future force employment, maintenance doctrine, and resourcing strategies on dynamic  warfighter “Go-to-War” capability.    These capabilities are embodied in the project’s primary product, referred to as the Go-to-War (GTW™) simulator. One exciting application of GTW™ is as a Class IX (spare parts) demand forecasting engine.  Already proven in real-world application, the GTW™ simulator has significant payoff potential measured in terms of increased operational availability/readiness, a smaller logistics footprint, and considerable Class IX acquisition cost savings.

Accurately forecasting Class IX demands and the dynamics of warfighting asset availability relative to mission needs requires accounting for interactions among the key factors that drive demand.  Unlike other forecasting models, the GTW™ simulator accounts for the key factors that drive demand, like optempo, asset employment policies (e.g., bank time curve-based usage), operating environment (e.g., fine sand, high altitude, severe temperature), maintenance practices and policies (e.g., time-life replacement, fixed-phase inspections, controlled substitution), accumulated age or wear, and probabilistic conditions (e.g., maintenance-induced damage, battle damage). 

This highly versatile technology can be used in various analysis and decision-making applications, including:  Class IX demand forecasting, deployment planning, analysis of surge impacts on sustainable readiness, force structure needs determination, tradeoff analysis, and what-if analyses (e.g., maintenance doctrine, operational use policy, budget impacts, operating environment changes). 

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. ARMY RESEARCH LABORATORY under Contract No. W911QX-04-C-0020.  Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. ARMY RESEARCH LABORATORY.