SIMULATED OPERATING CONCEPTS FOR WHOLESALE INVENTORY OPTIMIZATION AT NAVAL SUPPLY SYSTEMS COMMAND

摘要

Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support (NAVSUP WSS) serves as the Navy's inventory control point, managing approximately 375,000 line items. Constrained by funding, NAVSUP WSS uses the Wholesale Inventory Optimization Model (WIOM) to maximize customer service. Since demand distributions for different parts change over time, NAVSUP WSS reruns WIOM quarterly. However, large changes to the solution create an administrative burden. To deal with this problem, referred to as churn, WIOM has a persistence parameter that can discourage change from one run to the next, but it is inherently at odds with customer service performance. This research develops the Comparative Optimized Results Simulation to explore the system's performance under different persistence settings and periodicities of running WIOM. The research finds that periodicities greater than quarterly significantly degrade customer service, and increasing the persistence parameter dramatically improves churn while only marginally degrading customer service.