Units Consistency

After studying the results of my discrete event simulation of an airlift, I realized the results could be approximated using the average flying hours of the cargo aircraft.  I built a deterministic model of the time to complete an airlift using the concepts from physics called dimensional analysis. 

So the time to complete an airlift is equal to the total number of flying hours needed to transport the cargo to the destination divided by the average number of hours a cargo aircraft can fly per day divided by the number of aircraft in the fleet. 

That is,

days to complete the airlift = (total flying hours) / (flying hours/day/aircraft * aircraft)

The total flying hours needed to transport the cargo to the destination can be calculated as the total distance in nautical miles that needs to be traveled by the aircraft in the airlift divided the average speed of the cargo aircraft.

That is,

total flying hours required by the airlift =

(missions * nautical miles per mission round trip) / (nautical miles per hour)

This model demonstrated the importance of dimensional analysis as a tool for simulation.  I would later use a form of dimensional analysis called units consistency in my work in System Dynamics.