A desktop-OR success: Modeling Coast Guard buoy tender operations

The authors created a desktop-OR decision support system to support the Coast Guard’s planned replacement of the 37-vessel sea-going and coastal buoy tender fleet. Using sophisticated GIS routines to build travel networks and a rudimentary traveling salesman problem heuristic to generate routes, they proposed a seven-vessel decrease in the fleet, representing a capital cost savings of $350 million and personnel reduction of 500 billets. The commandant presented these results to Congress, and the Senate’s fiscal year 1993 U.S. Department of Transportation’s appropriations bill fully funded the replacement request and commended the Coast Guard’s analytical effort. The success of this application suggests a dynamic for the burgeoning desktop-OR market; the interface between operations research models and their algorithms is far more developed than the interface between actual problems and their models, and success will come to those who facilitate this latter mapping.