Scheduling simulation-based training

In the future, the United States Army will train thousands of soldiers each year in simulation facilities such as the Close Combat Tactical Trainer. In many respects, training success depends upon effective scheduling that maximizes the use and utilization of training resources. In the past, manual methods were used to schedule training scenarios and training resources over the schedule horizon. This paper presents an automated heuristic approach for scheduling training scenarios and resources for simulation training centers. We describe the scheduling problem, present a mathematical formulation of the problem, and discuss implementation of a heuristic procedure in a decision support system for scheduling. Computational results for the heuristic illustrate the method provides ‘good’ solutions based on several performance measures: training quality, resource utilization, and scheduling time.