An integrated design approach for evaluating the effectiveness and cost of a fleet

This work presents a new method for designing and evaluating different fleet paradigms to determine an effective and cost efficient solution. The method requires the user to define a set of functions which must be carried out by the fleet, as well as a set of candidate vehicles or systems that can carry out these functions. These function and fleet models are then evaluated to determine their performance. All the data is then fed into a stochastic dynamic fleet operation model to identify the amount of vehicles or systems needed to complete each mission defined on a fixed time horizon. The output of the fleet operation model is then used by cost models to determine the cost of completing each fleet mission. The overall approach is demonstrated on a military fleet composed of two different types of vehicle: a conventional fleet and a fleet composed of modules. The method shows the potential for savings using a modular fleet for a hypothetical fleet mission profile; more work in this area is suggested.

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