An Infinite Horizon Army Manpower Planning model

The Army must decide on the number of officers to access, promote, and, when necessary, separate each year. This thesis develops the Infinite Horizon Manpower Planning model (IHMP), an optimization model (based on convex quadratic programming), for managing officers in the Army Competitive Category. IHMP determines the annual numbers of accessions, promotions, and separations that best meet the desired inventory targets. In addition to operational and policy constraints, IHMP incorporates the recently implemented Officer Professional Management System XXI. Because one cannot imagine a day when the Army is not needed, the thesis regards personnel management as an infinite horizon planning problem and considers several techniques to approximate infinite time. Results from IHMP help analyze two personnel issues hypothesized by Army analysts. In one case, the Army requires the number of majors in the Operations career field to be at least 95% of its target and IHMP results indicate the number of majors in other career fields are short of their targets by as much as 30%. For the other case, IFIMP outputs indicate that current inventory targets are not well aligned for a 16% reduction to the overall number of officers. IHMP analyses show how to align these inventory targets for the reduced number of officers.http://archive.org/details/aninfinitehorizo109459339U.S. Army (USA) authorApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited