A Network Model to Maximize Navy Personnel Readiness and Its Solution

Iosif A. Krass, Mustafa Ç. Pinar, Theodore J. Thompson and Stavros Zenios
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Iosif A. Krass: Navy Personnel Research and Development Center, San Diego, California 92152-6800
Mustafa Ç. Pinar: The Institute for Numerical Analysis, The Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Lyngby, Denmark
Theodore J. Thompson: Navy Personnel Research and Development Center, San Diego, California 92152-6800

Management Science, 1994, vol. 40, issue 5, 647-661

Abstract: The problem of optimally (re)allocating Navy personnel to combat units is compounded by several considerations: availability of trained personnel, staffing of positions by occupation groups or ranks, and maintaining an acceptable level of readiness. In this paper we model this problem as a nonlinear nondifferentiable optimization problem. A reformulation of the nonlinear optimization problem as a network flow problem is then developed. The formulation results in a network flow problem with side constraints. An additional, nonnetwork, variable measures the readiness level. This new formulation permits the use of network optimization tools in order to solve effectively very large problems. We then develop two numerical methods for solving this problem. One method is based on a heuristic that solves (approximately) the nondifferentiable problem. The second method is based on a Linear-Quadratic Penalty (LQP) algorithm, and it exploits the embedded network structure by placing the side constraints into the objective function. The resulting nonlinear network program is solved using a simplicial decomposition of the network constraint set. Numerical results indicate the viability of this approach on problems with up to 36,000 arcs and 17,000 nodes with 3,700 side constraints.

Keywords: navy fleet readiness; naval personnel assignment; networks with side constraints; linear-quadratic penalty functions; heuristics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994
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