A Policy for Managing Operational Assets to Minimize Deprivation Costs

• DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2893125
• Publication Date: 2017-06-28T15:32:44Z
• Authors: Milad Keshvari Fard; Mahyar Eftekhar; Felix Papier
• Keywords: 0211 other engineering and technologies; 02 engineering and technology

Every year, humanitarian organizations assign a sizable slice of their limited financial resources to procure, operate and maintain operational assets, without which service delivery would be impossible. In this paper, using vehicles as representative we identify policies for sizing allocating capacity minimize deprivation costs in development context. the first stage, develop stochastic dynamic programming model show that it is too complex solved medium- large-size problems. Then, an efficient heuristic policy considers interaction asset purchasing operating decisions when budget uncertain. Based on data set provided by large international organization, estimate parameters our run numerical experiments. Results demonstrate following: (i) although uncertainty increases decreases utilization, but its negative impact mitigated if saving between periods allowed; (ii) over time may avoid all available assets periods; (iii) situations where differences criticality missions are large, both fleet utilization decrease; (iv) most situations, centralized procurement outperforms decentralized minimizing costs.