IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orinte/v35y2005i3p230-237.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.1050.0137
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/inte.1050.0137?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Antonio Romero-Medina, 2001. "`Sex-Equal' Stable Matchings," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 197-212, May.
    2. Iosif A. Krass & Mustafa Ç. Pinar & Theodore J. Thompson & Stavros A. Zenios, 1994. "A Network Model to Maximize Navy Personnel Readiness and Its Solution," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(5), pages 647-661, May.
    3. Dan O. Bausch & Gerald G. Brown & Danny R. Hundley & Stephen H. Rapp & Richard E. Rosenthal, 1991. "Mobilizing Marine Corps Officers," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 21(4), pages 26-38, August.
    4. Roth, Alvin E, 1984. "The Evolution of the Labor Market for Medical Interns and Residents: A Case Study in Game Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(6), pages 991-1016, December.
    5. Armacost, Andrew P. & Lowe, James K., 2005. "Decision support for the career field selection process at the US Air Force Academy," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 160(3), pages 839-850, February.
    6. Darwin Klingman & Nancy V. Phillips, 1984. "Topological and Computational Aspects of Preemptive Multicriteria Military Personnel Assignment Problems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(11), pages 1362-1375, November.
    7. Lawrence Bodin & Aaron Panken, 2003. "High Tech for a Higher Authority: The Placement of Graduating Rabbis from Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 33(3), pages 1-11, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James Boudreau & Vicki Knoblauch, 2013. "Preferences and the price of stability in matching markets," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 74(4), pages 565-589, April.
    2. Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth & Tayfun Sönmez, 2006. "Changing the Boston School Choice Mechanism," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 639, Boston College Department of Economics.
    3. Kyle Greenberg & Parag A. Pathak & Tayfun Sönmez, 2021. "Redesigning the US Army’s Branching Process: A Case Study in Minimalist Market Design," NBER Working Papers 28911, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Litsa Alexandra & Maguet Jean-François, 2012. "College Choice Mechanism: The Respect of the Vagueness of Choices," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 201202, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
    5. 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.
    6. Peter Coles & John Cawley & Phillip B. Levine & Muriel Niederle & Alvin E. Roth & John J. Siegfried, 2010. "The Job Market for New Economists: A Market Design Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(4), pages 187-206, Fall.
    7. Haruvy, Ernan & Roth, Alvin E. & Unver, M. Utku, 2006. "The dynamics of law clerk matching: An experimental and computational investigation of proposals for reform of the market," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 457-486, March.
    8. BONKOUNGOU, Somouaoga, 2016. "Pareto dominance of deferred acceptance through early decision," Cahiers de recherche 2016-07, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    9. Paula Jaramillo & Çaǧatay Kayı & Flip Klijn, 2014. "On the exhaustiveness of truncation and dropping strategies in many-to-many matching markets," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(4), pages 793-811, April.
    10. Muriel Niederle & Alvin E. Roth, 2009. "The Effects of a Centralized Clearinghouse on Job Placement, Wages, and Hiring Practices," NBER Chapters, in: Studies of Labor Market Intermediation, pages 235-271, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Scott Duke Kominers & Alexander Teytelboym & Vincent P Crawford, 2017. "An invitation to market design," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 33(4), pages 541-571.
    12. Parag A. Pathak & Alex Rees-Jones & Tayfun Sönmez, 2020. "Immigration Lottery Design: Engineered and Coincidental Consequences of H-1B Reforms," NBER Working Papers 26767, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Ozkal-Sanver, Ipek, 2004. "A note on gender fairness in matching problems," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 211-217, March.
    14. Robin S. Lee & Michael Schwarz, 2017. "Interviewing in two-sided matching markets," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 48(3), pages 835-855, August.
    15. Lee, Kangoh, 2012. "Early selection and moral hazard," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 139-142.
    16. Du, Qingyuan & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2013. "A theory of the competitive saving motive," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 275-289.
    17. Chen, Peter & Egesdal, Michael & Pycia, Marek & Yenmez, M. Bumin, 2016. "Median stable matchings in two-sided markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 64-69.
    18. Marco LiCalzi, 2022. "Bipartite choices," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 45(2), pages 551-568, December.
    19. Abizada, Azar, 2016. "Stability and incentives for college admissions with budget constraints," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(2), May.
    20. Jiang, Zhishan & Tian, Guoqiang, 2013. "Matching with Couples: Stability and Algorithm," MPRA Paper 57936, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jul 2014.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:35:y:2005:i:3:p:230-237. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.