A network model (OSGM-NPS) for the U.S. Marine Corps officer staffing goal problem

Abstract

This thesis develops and implements a network linear programming model, called the Officer Staffing Goal Model-NPS (OSGM-NPS), to assist the United States Marine Corps in the peacetime allocation of active duty officers to meet manpower requirements. Due to the Marine Corps' small officer population and diverse range of missions, they are constantly faced with the problem of which officer job positions to fill and which to leave vacant. A set of manning targets, called staffing goals , is needed to ensure the officer population is efficiently used. Targets are obtained by an allocation model (a generalized version of an assignment model) that takes the officer population (supply) and manpower requirements (demand) and retums a solution that fills the most requirements with the most suitable officers. A staffing goal for a billet represents the existence of an officer in the population that can fill that billet. The Marine Corps prioritizes requirements into classes, and unmet requirements within a priority class are shared evenly. OSGM-NPS's computer implementation comprises a group of portable algorithms written in FORTRAN using the elastic transhipment network solver ENET. OSGM-NPS solves the officer staffing goal problem with more requirements filled and unmet requirements more evenly shared than the current mainframe computer model, and it executes in a few minutes on a desktop personal computer making it a less expensive, more accessible model