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ProPlan21 Ontology, Simulation, Visualization, and Methodology

Key to the responsiveness of Air Logistic Centers (ALC), the hub for the maintenance, repair, and overhaul of Air Force aircraft, is planning.  This is a particularly acute need given the increasing pace of worldwide Air Force operations, and ALCs are under pressure to reduce the number of aircraft on station at any given time, to speed maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) turnaround, and meet on-time delivery commitments despite significant variability in work content (such as through drop-ins and unpredictable work), component part reliabilities, and replacement part acquisition lead-time—all while maintaining consistently high standards of quality.

This initiative, funded by the U.S. Air Force and now in Phase II, is researching and proofing concepts for an advanced maintenance, repair, and overhaul based multi-echelon planning and analysis technology. The results will provide technology for the rapid definition, creation, and editing of constraint based MRO plans, enabling advanced plan analysis and plan execution for depot management decision support across all production echelons.

In the dynamic environment of MRO, there is a need for point-of-discovery planning support with interactive plan critique/verification for all levels of MRO management.  This type of support will help management produce optimized plans, schedules, situation responses, and process designs. The technology will allow depot decision makers to rapidly specify, evaluate, compare, and select the optimal process based on a quantitative analysis of the process’ impact on both scheduled and surge-critical production scenarios.

Phase II Development

The Advanced MRO Multi-echelon Planning & Scheduling (ProPlan21) will enable this advanced planning and analysis support by providing a state of the art intelligent process design repository driven by advanced constraint management and semantic web capabilities. Key innovations of the ProPlan21 technology include a cross-echelon approach that combines multiple soft computing and knowledge discovery methods for rapid constraint-based planning and a process model-based approach that maximizes re-use of domain knowledge for rapid model development, deployment, and analysis. A key research goal is to establish an architecture that allows for mass customization and rapid deployment of ProPlan21 technology in multiple application situations and across other ALCs.

This initiative is addressing a number of technical barriers that will help Air Force ALCs to more effectively plan MRO activities and meet increased aircraft needs. In particular, it will provide the advanced concepts and methods for effective constraint discovery, definition, and representation, and for cost effective life cycle plan maintenance.

This material is based upon work supported by the United States Air Force under Contract No. FA8103-06-C-0259.  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 United States Air Force.