Case Study

Managing the F-16 “Collision of Mods” with the Inventory Decision Support Process

Problem Statement

To ensure the continued lethality and effectiveness of the F-16 fleet, the U.S. Air Force is undertaking one of the largest modernization efforts in its history. Over 600 F-16 aircraft will undergo up to 22 modifications across the next several years. The program office’s effort to manage this “collision of mods” is highly complex and must balance variables such as delivery of modification kits (supply), the timing of various upgrades, and operational demands for the aircraft across 6 major commands and 18 bases.

Solution

SPA supports enterprise managers with state-of-the-art decision support through the Inventory Decision Support Process (IDSP). The IDSP is a powerful modeling and simulation capability that enables stakeholders to align budget and planning factors and to ask “what if” questions for maximum flexibility. Based in prescriptive analytics, the IDSP forecasts optimal modification and transition schedules for a single view of long-term future readiness. Stakeholders now work from an authoritative baseline that provides ground truth for decision-making across the enterprise.

Key Accomplishments Based on IDSP Use

IDSP-based forecasting and analysis enables F-16 stakeholders to achieve significant improvement in overall scheduling performance:

To strike the appropriate balance between priorities, IDSP’s forecasting and data visualizations allow the program office and other critical stakeholders to assess the relative effects of various courses of action on depot and field teams’ capacity, modification kit consumption, and aircraft configurations.
IDSP’s ability to align installations with supply-chain considerations can accelerate the speed-to-field of specific capabilities, giving F-16 planners the option to equip the entire fleet with the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar more than 2 years earlier than planned.
The prescriptive analytics of IDSP help the F-16 enterprise improve aircraft availability, minimize shortfalls, and maintain long-term operational readiness by integrating the Air Force’s tiered-readiness schedules into the timing of maintenance and modernizations.