Optimizing United States Marine Corps enlisted assignments
By:  Brian F. Tivnan
Publisher: Naval Postgraduate School; Available from National Technical Information Service
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Monterey, Calif; Springfield, Va
Language: eng
Number of pages: 60
Description: The United States Marine Corps (USMC) has 156,000 active duty enlisted Marines and annually orders over      90,000 of them to permanently change station. The Commandant of the Marine Corps requires assignments of      the "Right Marine, to the right place with the right skills and quality of life." USMC manpower planning uses      staffing goals (billet requirements) to capture the Commandant's requirements, but, surprisingly, does not      monitor how many Marines fill appropriate staffing goal billets. This thesis finds that although the staffing goals      are completely achievable, only 45% of active duty Marines fill a staffing goal billet and 47% of staffing goal      billets are under-staffed. The USMC has used the Enlisted Assignment Model (EAM) since the 1970s to help      enlisted monitors determine assignments. EAM has several shortcomings. Among these, enlisted monitors reject      most of EAM suggested assignments and EAM offers no measure of effectiveness to gauge the quality of its      assignments. This thesis presents a network model, EAM-GLOBAL to optimize the by-name assignment of      Marines to staffing goal billets. EAM-GLOBAL attempts to assign the "right Marines to the right places" while      simultaneously balancing staffing shortages, allowing grade and military occupational specialty substitutions, and      minimizing the costs of permanent change of station transfers within the continental United States.
Notes: "September 1998."

Thesis advisor(s): Robert F. Dell.

Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research) Naval Postgraduate School, September 1998..

Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-57).

Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.

Also available online.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat reader.

US Marine Corps (USMC) author.

dk/dk cc:9116 11/24/98.