U.S. Navy shipyards

RAND investigated cost-effective workforce-management strategies, alternative workload allocations, and the relevant best practices of comparable organizations to assist the Navy in managing the public shipyards. The Navy uses many practices common in other organizations, but reducing planned levels of overtime and increasing the permanent journeyman staff at the public shipyards could cost-effectively hedge against future workload growth.

"The U.S. Navy spends nearly $4 billion annually on maintaining ships. Most of this work is done at public shipyards that perform some of the most complex tasks the Department of Defense must accomplish. Shipyard managers face some unique challenges. The shipyards are required to be flexible enough to meet both planned and emerging operational needs that can cause significant disruptions to schedulesand workloads. Laws and policies dictating when, where, and by whom maintenance can be performed limit management options."

"RAND therefore investigated cost-effective workforce-management strategies, alternative workload allocations, and the relevant best practices of comparable organizations. The authors concluded that the Navy uses practices common in other organizations to manage workload variability and uncertainty. However, the Navy's workload forecasts have consistently underestimated the eventual demand on the shipyards. To accomplish the additional, unplanned work, the Navy has used overtime levels that significantly exceed cost-effective levels."--Jacket.