- Author
- Saunders, P. B. | Ku, R.
- Title
- Sequencing the Purchase and Retirement of Fire Engines.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- NBS SP 411,
- Distribution
- Available from Government Printing Office
- Book or Conf
- National Bureau of Standards. Fire Safety Research. Proceedings of a Symposium. August 22, 1973., Gaithersburg, MD, 201-214 p., 1973
- Keywords
- dynamic programming | equipment replacement | fire fighting vehicles
- Abstract
- A mathematical model and solution method are presented for the problem of determining an "optimum" manner of sequencing the purchase and retirement of fire engines. The method calculates that stream of "buy and retire" decisions which, subject to certain natural constraints (such as limits on annual acquisitions), minimizes the operating cost of the fleet of engines over a prescribed planning period. Implemented as an efficient computer program, the model has been applied to illustrative data from the Washington, D.C. Fire Department. The approach carries over to problems dealing with the replacement of other types of items (e.g., ambulances, small fleets of aircraft, typewriters) whose reliability-maintenance becomes increasingly expehsive with age.