File:STATISTICAL AND PROCESS ANALYSES OF THE U.S. SIXTH FLEET SHIPBOARD KEY LEADER ENGAGEMENTS (IA statisticalandpr1094561334).pdf

The U.S. Sixth Fleet conducts numerous multinational maritime operations, during which the involved U.S. naval vessels host a multitude of key leader engagements, costing $221,000 during FY2018. These events are financed by Official Representation Funds (ORF) and, when hosted by smaller naval ships, are particularly vulnerable to requiring rental equipment due to their lack of storage onboard. Of interest is to explore whether the ownership of this equipment is more cost effective than renting and whether or not this would improve the Navy’s ability to streamline these events. The purpose of our research is two-fold: 1) to perform a statistical analysis of a buy-versus-rent model of this reception equipment, and 2) to conduct a process flow analysis of the tasks and time required to support such events. Our analysis reveals that owning is less expensive than the rental of this equipment, even for a single event. In addition, ownership results in a 50% man-hour decrease per event. As such, our recommendation is to purchase a given quantity of this equipment, store them at NAS Sigonella, and ship them as needed to host vessels. This strategy will save the U.S. Sixth Fleet between $22,000 and $48,000 annually, and if expanded to all fleets of the U.S. Navy, will save between $122,000 and $288,000 annually.

Subjects: official representation funds; process flow analysis; descriptive statistics; statistical inference; location-allocation analysis