Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

The Marine Corps has long been successful in assigning its available personnel to vacant billets. However, by our research, the Marine Corps has not been as successful in minimizing assignment costs when moving a Marine to another permanent duty station. With increased pressure on cost savings due to shrinking budgets, the importance of cost minimizing efforts is becoming more significant. This thesis examines the Marine Corps personnel assignment process and proposes a methodology for optimizing the allocation of Marine Corps personnel that minimizes assignment costs while taking into account constraints such as military occupational specialty, billet vacancies, duty station preference, and seniority. Optimization is achieved by incorporating an integer programming model into the personnel assignment process. The model is tested by contrasting the results of the actual assignments of a 15-Marine sample with the results of simulated optimization assignments of the same sample. The findings of this thesis show that the proposed methodology is both valid and feasible, and that it could yield significant monetary savings for the Marine Corps.