Air Force scheduling error

At the end of August, a U.S. Air Force B-52 took six nuclear weapons from North Dakota to Louisiana. The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Air Force has finished its investigation into the error. According to the article, Air Force Major General Richard Newton said that the problems began with a breakdown in the formal scheduling process. The crew loading the airplane used an outdated paper schedule instead of referring to the electronic scheduling system, so the crew loaded the wrong cruise missiles. The loading crew and others also failed to perform required safety procedures.

As someone who studies production scheduling, this case highlights the interesting nature of scheduling systems, which are complex decision-making processes. The use of informal methods or shortcuts is widespread in scheduling systems. Printing out the schedule a few days ahead of time and using that (instead of getting the most recent schedule from the software) is probably widespread. Of course, that doesn't excuse the behavior, especially when one is dealing with nuclear weapons. It just points out that scheduling systems are only as effective as they are actually used, not as they are necessarily designed.