An Agent-Based Approach for Optimizing Modular Vehicle Fleet Operation

Abstract: Modularity in military vehicle designs enables on-base assembly, disassembly, and reconfiguration of vehicles, which can be beneficial in promoting fleet adaptability and life cycle cost savings. To properly manage the fleet operation and to control the resupply, demand prediction, and scheduling process, this paper illustrates an agent-based approach customized for highly modularized military vehicle fleets and studies the feasibility and flexibility of modularity for various mission scenarios. Given deterministic field demands with operation stochasticity, we compare the performance of a modular fleet to a conventional fleet in equivalent operation strategies and also compare fleet performance driven by heuristic rules and optimization. Several indicators are selected to quantify the fleet performance, including operation costs, total resupplied resources, and fleet readiness. When the model is implemented for military Joint Tactical Transport System (JTTS) mission, our results indicate that fleet modularity can reduce total resource supplies without significant losses in fleet readiness. The benefits of fleet modularity can also be amplified through a real-time optimized operation strategy. To highlight the feasibility of fleet modularity, a parametric study is performed to show the impacts from working capacity on modular fleet performance. Finally, we provide practical suggestions of modular vehicle designs based on the analysis and other possible usage.