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The US Army Uses a Network Optimization Model to Designate Career Fields for Officers

Author

Listed:
  • Dan Shrimpton

    (Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel—G1, 300 Army Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301)

  • Alexandra M. Newman

    (Division of Economics and Business, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado 80401)

Abstract

In 1999, the United States Army instituted a new career-progression pattern for its officers. This pattern assigns, or designates, Army officers to specialized roles in which they must serve. Such roles include, for example, foreign area officer and operations research analyst. Manually designating officers into these roles under the new system is impossible because the problem is very large. We developed a network-optimization model, the career-field designation model, that makes these designations in minutes on a personal computer. The US Army has used this system four times since June 2001 to designate a total of approximately 10,500 officers and expects to continue to use the model to designate about 1,500 officers each year.

Suggested Citation

  • Dan Shrimpton & Alexandra M. Newman, 2005. "The US Army Uses a Network Optimization Model to Designate Career Fields for Officers," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 230-237, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:35:y:2005:i:3:p:230-237
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.1050.0137
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Bastian, Nathaniel D. & Lunday, Brian J. & Fisher, Christopher B. & Hall, Andrew O., 2020. "Models and methods for workforce planning under uncertainty: Optimizing U.S. Army cyber branch readiness and manning," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    2. Sharan Srinivas & Mohammadmahdi Alizadeh & Nathaniel D.Bastian, 2017. "Optimizing Student Team and Job Assignments for the Holy Family Academy," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 47(2), pages 163-174, April.
    3. Sutton, Warren & Dimitrov, Stanko, 2013. "The U.S. Navy explores detailing cost reduction via Data Envelopment Analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 227(1), pages 166-173.
    4. Nathaniel D. Bastian & Pat McMurry & Lawrence V. Fulton & Paul M. Griffin & Shisheng Cui & Thor Hanson & Sharan Srinivas, 2015. "The AMEDD Uses Goal Programming to Optimize Workforce Planning Decisions," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 45(4), pages 305-324, August.

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