Optimally reorganizing navy shore infrastructure

Abstract

The United States has significantly reduced defense spending since the end of the cold war for both its force structure (equipment and manpower) and military support base (infrastructure). However, infrastructure reductions at the conclusion of legislated Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) continue to lag force structure reductions. Reorganization, outsourcing and homebasing are current United States Navy initiatives to reduce shore infrastructure spending without BRAC. While regionalization and outsourcing decrease the number of jobs needed on a shore installation, homebasing generally increases the number of available personnel. To jointly consider these opposing effects, we develop the Regionalization and Outsourcing Optimization Model (ROOM), an integer linear program that suggests an optimal combination of regionalization and outsourcing for a Navy shore installation with personnel numbers altered by homebasing. ROOM is a novel application of optimization modeling. A ROOM test use from the Pearl Harbor Naval Installation has proposed homebasing, regionalization and outsourcing options for 109 "functions", or shore installation activities. Disregarding homebasing and its opposing effects, regionalization is myopically the lowest cost option for 106 of these functions. ROOM considers homebasing and recommends regionalizing only 21 functions, outsourcing 14, and leaving 74 unchanged. ROOM's recommendations reduce first-year personnel spending by more than $9.5 million.