Approved for public release; distribution in unlimited. / Future sea bases, such as the Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future), will serve as key distribution nodes and must be able to sustain forces ashore and selectively offload supplies from storerooms quickly and efficiently. Current MPF ships maximize the available cargo storage onboard and have little ability to selectively offload supplies. To make selective offload a reality, MPF(F) requires lower stowage densities and new technologies to efficiently move items, especially for those supplies needed in direct support of forces ashore. The difficult questions are how dense and in what configurations MPF(F) storerooms can be packed, and how items should be retrieved in order to selectively offload supplies and provide acceptable response time. We analyze the trade-off between storage density and mean retrieval time in a dynamic environment for different storage densities and configurations in notional storerooms aboard a future sea base. We examine two demand scenarios and two different retrieval rules to determine how each storage configuration responds to retrieval requests over time. Our results provide insight into the types of storeroom configurations that provide the best mean retrieval times and how a simple retrieval rule can significantly reduce mean retrieval time under certain demand conditions. / Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy

<p>  The world continues to advance at a hastening pace towards a technology enabled, digital-centric future. Legacy organizations, not born in the ‘digital age’ are examining methods to adapt through Digital Transformation (DT). The US Department of Defense (DoD) is one such organization. The DoD emerged their 2018 Digital Engineering Strategy intending on transforming the enterprise from one with ‘engineering process [that] are document-intensive and stove-piped, leading to extended cycle times with systems that are cumbersome to change and sustain’ to one that is ‘transforming its engineering practices to digital engineering, incorporating technological innovations into an integrated, digital, model-based approach’. </p> <p>  The 2018 Strategy acknowledges that the integration of digital engineering will not be exclusive to the engineering communities of the DoD; rather, the integration will impact the ‘research, requirements, acquisition, test, cost, sustainment and intelligence communities’. While the Strategy is designed to explain the ‘what’ necessary to integrate digital engineering, the various DoD Services (and their subordinates) will need to develop the ‘how’ regarding implementation that is culturally appropriate to their commands.</p> <p>  The study sought to examine ‘how’ implementation of digital engineering tenets may be appropriated to the existent culture of one US Special Operations Command subordinate at the Echelon III level (namely Naval Special Warfare Group – FOUR). The results of this study are intended to provide understanding and illuminate meaning behind those themes in Digital Engineering that Subject Matter Experts within Naval Special Warfare view as suitably adaptable to their processes. The intent is to provide themes with utility towards further efforts and research aimed at phasing Digital Transformation initiatives at Naval Special Warfare Group – FOUR.</p>