Use of Critical Chain Scheduling to Increase Aircraft Availability

United States Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) has a minimal number of aircraft at its disposal. As a result, the aircraft are considered high demand, low-density (small number in Air Force inventory) weapon systems. Any chance to increase aircraft availability would greatly enhance the capability of AFSOC. Isochronal maintenance (ISO) conducted once every 365 days (per AFI for C-130 aircraft) provides the best opportunity to increase aircraft availability by improving the scheduling of tasks and accurately estimating the inspection duration. Scheduled maintenance portrays the characteristics of projects, therefore, this theses proposed that Critical Chain (CC) scheduling, a project management technique, could provide an improved ISO schedule reducing aircraft downtime. The ISO inspection process was modeled three ways (1) existing process, (2) task constraints removed, and (3) task and resource constraints removed. 100 simulated aircraft inspections took place in each model. The simulated duration times were compared to estimates provided by the use of Critical Path and Critical Chain scheduling techniques. Critical Chain scheduling techniques did not directly increase aircraft availability. However, Critical Chain scheduling did identify the potential for increasing aircraft availability by removing policy and scheduling constraints.Air Force Inst of Tech Wright-Patterson AFB OH School of Engineering and Management is the author of 'Use of Critical Chain Scheduling to Increase Aircraft Availability', published 2002 under ISBN 9781423512110 and ISBN 1423512111.