An Optimization Model to Minimize the Bullwhip Effect in the U.S. 155mm Ammunition Defense Industrial Base

The submission of the United States President’s Budget to Congress for theDepartment of Defense is the result of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) process and provides the annual cost to manage the nation’s resources. The 2025 budget submission outlines the U.S. Army’s goal of procuring 100,000 rounds of 155mm artillery per month by the end of fiscal year 2025, up from 20,000 in fiscal year 2023 and 28,000 in fiscal year 2024 (U.S. Army, 2024). One of the many challenges associated with such investments arises from the volatile nature of demand and the impacts of such volatility on the supply chain. In this instance, the unpredictable nature of war itself can clearly be attributed to increased demand volatility for the overall macroeconomic enterprise of the ammunition industrial base. The counterargument, however, is that modern nation-states have been forced to maintain a steady-state industrial base for wartime commodities and maintain known capacities as well as the flexibility to operate up to that capacity when required. This research examines what happens to the supply chain of the modern-nation state industrial base, using the United States as the case study, when demand stretches beyond the anticipated capacities. In such instances, the demand volatility, or variability, tends to have increased effects further upstream in the supply chain and is commonly referred to as the bullwhip, or Forrester, effect (Lee, Padmanabhan, & Whang, 2004). The results of this research propose cost savings of 27% and alternatives to decrease the negative effects of the bullwhip effect ratio volatility for program managers and budgeting practitioners to mitigate the increased costs caused when that volatility ripples through the defense industrial base and increases costs to suppliers.

Author

• Williams, Jamal T.

Language

• English

Keyword

• Bullwhip Effect
• Program Management
• Ammunition
• President's Budget
• Artillery
• Optimization

Date created

• 2025

Type of Work

• Dissertation

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Engineering Management

Degree

• D.Engr.

Advisor

• Jones, Michael C.
• Mazzuchi, Thomas A.

Committee Member(s)

• Etemadi, Amir

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/q811kk573