Patent ID: 8620714

Claim:
A computer-implemented method to manage utilization of a fleet of vehicles, comprising: receiving, via a computing device, data from the fleet of vehicles for historical missions and maintenance activity and at least one of hypothetical operational data and hypothetical maintenance data; determining future mission and maintenance requirements for the fleet of vehicles using the historical missions and maintenance activity and the at least one of hypothetical operational data and hypothetical maintenance data; processing the received data and the requirements to provide an operational allocation of the fleet of vehicles; modifying, via the computing device, the operational allocation of the fleet of vehicles by changing at least one decision of the mission or the maintenance requirements of the operational allocation, the at least one decision selected from fault forwarding, fix or fly decision, and condition-based maintenance, or a combination thereof, the modified operational allocation satisfying at least one of reducing operational costs or increasing availability of the vehicles in the fleet of vehicles; generating, via the computing device, a schedule for the modified operational allocation of the fleet of vehicles to implement the at least one decision of the mission or maintenance requirements; and generating an output which presents an operational availability sensitivity analysis of fleet availability to manpower consumption for a baseline fleet and an upgraded fleet, wherein the operational availability sensitivity analysis charts fleet availability in response to a reduction in maintenance manpower from a full maintenance schedule to a maintenance schedule which results in a reduction in fleet availability.