During the loading
of missions from the database, all the commands from the top-level panel will
be inactive. The status-bar will show what is going on. The Allocator will
first load the set of resources defined in the selection criteria and then load
all the missions in the specified date range that require the wings and aircraft
type specified in the criteria.
The Allocator assigns resource at the aggregate wing level. The
resource availability data loaded from the corporate database tells
the system how many aircraft are available in a particular wing. Each
wing has its total number of possessed aircraft. Since one aircraft
cannot fly more than one mission simultaneously, this number
represents the maximum number of missions a wing can fly at a certain
point in time. However, not all the aircraft can be allocated by the
Barrel to AMC missions. The wing will keep certain resources on
reserve for local missions, maintenance, or training. The wing
publishes the number of aircraft it will make available to the
Barrel.
This number, usually smaller than the total number of possessed
aircraft, is the contract level of the wing for a given
time period. The remaining aircraft are not available to the Barrel
and we refer to them as fenced. Under special circumstances,
the Barrel can go over contract levels and use fenced capacity.
The database has missions that have already been seen by the Barrel
and new missions that still need to be allocated.
During the loading of missions,
the Allocator will try to allocate all the previously assigned missions in the
database using the current resource availability. If some missions cannot be
allocated, they will be marked as UNASSIGNABLE. New missions, that is,
missions that have not been seen by the Barrel, will be marked as
UNASSIGNED.
One of the basic capabilities of the Barrel Allocator is the
non-disruptive, automatic assignment of resources to missions.
When the loading of missions finishes, just use the command Assign Airlift
from the Allocate top-level menu to automatically assign the missions to
available resources. Each planned mission specifies an aircraft type,
a preferred wing, and the time interval it should fly. The Allocator,
in automatic mode, will try to assign the required aircraft type,
flying from the preferred wing, in the specified interval. It will not
use more capacity than it is available nor it will violate the requirements.
The Allocator will
try to assign the required airplane type and the planned wing to the mission.
If there is no capacity available, the mission will be marked
UNASSIGNABLE.
Since usually there are more than one wing for a given aircraft type,
the Barrel would eventually consider using an aircraft from a
different wing than the one specified by the planner.
To make the Allocator consider alternative wings during automatic
allocation,
(1) open the Mission Window, (2) from
the Options menu use the Allocation Preferences command to open
the preferences window, and (3) select the set of wings to be used by setting the
value of the field Resource Sets.
Inspecting Resource Utilization and Missions
The Barrel Allocator provides two main visualization tools to the
Barrel. One is the Resource Capacity Window
or graphical commitment matrix, and the
Mission Window. These views allow the user to inspect resource
utilization over time, to and to manipuate missions and allocation
options in different ways.
To create any of these views,
from the Views menu on the top-level panel, use the
Missions command to create a mission oriented view or the Resources cascading
menu to create different types of resource views. These resource views are the
graphical representation of the commitment matrix. The Resource Inspector
provides a hierarchical view of the available resources and
allows the creation of resource views grouping different types of
resources.
These groupings are particularly useful when considering alternative
resource allocations. Bookmarks can also be created for frequently
used grupings.
