Developing a Repeatable Methodology to Calculate Retrograde Planning Factors

Kristan Klinghoffer ; Kenneth J. Girardini ; Arthur Lackey ; Cheryl Kravchuck ; Bonnie Magnuson

RAND Corporation

RAND Corporation

关键词: Military Equipment;    Military Force Planning;    Military Logistics;    United States Army;   

DOI  :  10.7249/RR993
RP-ID  :  RR-993-A

学科分类：自然科学（综合）

美国|英语

来源: RAND Corporation Published Research

【 摘 要 】

Retrograde is the movement or return of both serviceable and unserviceable materiel back through the distribution system to a designated ship-to location, repair facility, or point of disposal. To plan for and field a force capable of efficient retrograde operations, the Army must possess accurate planning factors, by class of supply, to estimate the retrograde workload that will occur, both during ongoing theater operations and during redeployment operations. The flow of retrograde during operations over the past decade has been very slow. This has led to an almost continuous backlog in theater of materiel to be retrograded that the Army had difficulty eliminating. It appears that the Army regularly underresourced the theater organizations involved in retrograde operations, in part due to inadequate retrograde planning factors. To address this problem, RAND Arroyo Center developed and demonstrated a repeatable methodology for developing accurate retrograde planning factors, informed by process mapping, empirical data analysis, and discussions with Army supply officers. The methodology determines retrograde planning factors as a percentage of customer issues and is agnostic to theater, theater development, and unit type variances. The output of this report is a series of retrograde planning factors, by class of supply and by phase of operation, expressed as a percentage of forward flows of supplies to units.