Workforce considerations: maintenance of the future ATC system

The authors describe the development of a remote maintenance monitoring system, the rationale for consolidation of the field maintenance workforce, and the development of an automated modeling tool, the work center consolidation model. The model is described, and the methodology used to validate a node substitution algorithm is explained in detail. The node substitution algorithm has been implemented and incorporated into the work center location model (WCLM). The improved WCLM has the combined benefits of the dBASE III command language and the reduced processing requirements of the node substitution algorithm. This provides user friendliness and fast and flexible data manipulation, while the node substitution algorithm allows the WCLM to model regionwide problems in reasonable time and with reasonable effort. The improved WCLM has been successfully used to model the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA´s) Southern Region. The WCLM was able to model the various configurations required by the region, and it produced the optimal combination of work centers acceptable to the region