Increasing Cost-Effective Readiness for the U.S. Air Force by Reducing Supply Chain Variance: Technical Analysis of Flying Hour Program Variance

Improving demand forecast accuracy is one way to reduce the $4 billion that the Air Force spends annually on spare parts. A step toward this is to reduce the flying hour variance–the difference between predicted and actual numbers of flying hours. RAND researchers were asked to gauge the potential effect of flying hour variance on cost and readiness, identify the causes of the variance and quantify their effects, and identify possible solutions.