Military Manpower Planning: Optimization Modeling for the Army Officer Accession/Branch Detail Program.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide the Armys Officer Personnel Management Directorate OPMD with a flexible, responsive, manpower optimization model that assists personnel planners in determining yearly officer accessions and serves as an analysis tool with which to evaluate the impact of planned accessions. This thesis also surveys the Armys Branch Detail Program and its impact on the problem of balancing the lieutenant overages that occur among the Armys career branches. The modeling effort put forth in this study combined multiobjective programming, probability theory, and insights gained from queuing theory to develop a multiyear manpower planning model known as the Officer Accession Branch Detail Model OABDM. OABDM is a multi-year weighted goal program designed to maximize the Armys ability to meet forecasted authorization requirements subject to OPMD policy guidance. This study demonstrates that multi-year goal programs such as OABDM serve as meaningful analytical tools and that the dynamic capability of these models offer benefits that steady state models cannot provide. Additionally, feedback derived from OABDM and queuing theory suggest that the current two and four year Army detail plan does not offer a viable means for aligning lieutenant overages among Army career branches.