Beyond Distribution and Assignment: Managing Navy Careers Keith Womer Chair: Mississippi Consortium for Military Perso

1. Beyond Distribution and Assignment: Managing Navy Careers Keith WomerChair: Mississippi Consortium for Military Personnel Research

2. Managing Navy Careers • Introduction • Background • Supply Chain Problems • A Model

3. Managing Navy Careers Introduction • The holy grail -- technological solutions to distribution and assignment. • A failed search – lack of understanding of the various stakeholders. • Our approach -- provide technical support and timely, relevant information to the stakeholders enabling high quality decisions. • We model the sequence of jobs that a sailor has over a career as a supply chain. • Each command receives the services of a sailor but it also invests in the sailor by providing training and experience. • The contribution of this research is not to test models or solve • general assignment problems, but to introduce Supply Chain Management as a way of thinking about the problem

4. Managing Navy Careers:Navy Facts • Approximately 800,000 enlisted and officers (sailors) • Over 4,000 specialty ratings, designations, and variations in skill • Over 2,000 personnel available for reassignment in any given six week period • Nearly half of personnel have dependents and or families • Innumerable rules, regulations, and guidance in the reassignment and quality of life of personnel • Numerous echelons of management and authority ultimately responsible to President of United States, Congress, and the American public. • Identifiable jobs to be assigned outnumber personnel at least 2 to 1. • Personnel funding constraints results in approximately 80% manning. • Low retention acerbated by American economy (but improving) • High operational tempo, moderate pay, and other factors result in high turnover

5. Managing Navy Careers :Statement of Problem • Every 36 months a sailor ‘rotates’ jobs. • Every two weeks, a detailer receives an updated list of jobs. • Their job is to match “the needs of the Navy” with “the needs of the individual.” • Our goal is to stretch this process out giving a sailor many “choices” in assignment. • We investigate procedures of Supply Chain Management for career planning. • Our task is to draw parallels between the traditional supply chain and the progress of a well planned Navy career.

6. Managing Navy Careers Stakeholders • Sailors • More choices • More vision on career • More timely information on the possible assignments • Commands • Short at sea gaps • Qualified sailors • High quality sailors • Information on availability

7. Managing Navy Careers Stakeholders • The Navy • Equitable distribution among commands • Better retention of high quality sailors • Efficiency • Detailers • Less resistance from sailors • Less wasted time on sailors who are not going to stay • Fewer short tours • Less outside influence • Longer learning curve • Opportunity to develop the trust of the sailor • More jobs for a better match

8. Managing Navy Careers • Is a Navy career a supply chain? • Sailors are recruited and trained for initial assignments • They move through progressively more responsible positions • Job requirements are met by acquiring additional training in advance of new assignments

9. Managing Navy Careers • What elements of a Navy Career are not like a supply chain • Sailors perform in early jobs. They are not just in training. • Commands see training as a cost. Unless they benefit, training for the next position is “not my job.” • Commands may both provide sailors to other commands and get sailors from those same commands. The chain has kinks. • At intervals, sailors can opt out of the system.

10. Managing Navy CareersProblems in Supply Chains: The Bullwhip Effect Demand Signal Processing • Demand forecasts are updated based on observed demand at each stage. • The variance of orders amplifies when the distorted information passed up the supply chain because of “multiple forecasts”. • Long lead time aggravates the distortion

11. Managing Navy Careers Problems in Supply Chains: The Bullwhip Effect • Solutions • Give the manufacturer demand data at the retail outlet; (practice: request sell-through data from resellers, HP, Apple, and IBM) • Have a single member of the supply chain perform forecasting and ordering for other members (practice: VMI, P&G and Wal-Mart) • Direct marketing channel; (“Dell Direct”, “Consumer Direct” Apple) • Reduce lead time. (Quick response in the apparel industry)

12. Managing Navy Careers • Is this a problem in our supply chain? • Is the demand seen by recruiting command and A schools the same as that seen by the fleet? • How and by whom is the forecast updated?

13. Managing Navy Careers Problems in Supply Chains: The Bullwhip Effect The Rationing Game Under the shortage situation the manufacturer rations the supply based on retailers’ orders. For low-demand periods this is not a problem but in high-demand periods the retailer responds by over ordering. Again variance is amplified especially when combined with demand signal processing.

14. Managing Navy Careers Problems in Supply Chains: The Bullwhip Effect Solutions Allocate the supply in proportion to the retailer’s market share in the previous period; (Saturn, HP) Manufacturer shares production and inventory information with downstream members of the supply chain; (Scheduling sharing, HP, Motorola) Contract that restricts the buyer’s flexibility. (HP, Sun, Seagate)

15. Managing Navy Careers • Do we see inflated requirements in anticipation of shortages? • How do we allocate shortages? • Does this lead to variance and under utilization?

16. Managing Navy Careers Problems in Supply Chains: The Bullwhip Effect Order Batching Consequence of the periodic review process and the processing cost of a purchase transaction. The buyers try to gain economies in pricing and transportation. Orders are positively correlated fall in the same time period thus higher variance.

17. Managing Navy Careers Problems in Supply Chains: The Bullwhip Effect Solutions Reduce the need for order batching by lowering the transaction cost; (EDI, Nabisco’s CAO) Discount on assorted truckload, coordination of delivery schedules, and consolidation by 3rd party logistics providers. (P&G)

18. Managing Navy Careers Do we have a fixed ordering cost? Schools can consolidate demand over time instead of by location. Can the internet reduce the need to batch for schools? Think about the sailor as a mix of skills, i.e. a mixed truckload. Does the timing of rotations cause batching?

19. Managing Navy Careers Problems in Supply Chains: The Bullwhip Effect Price Variations High-low pricing and the asynchrony of delivery & purchase. Strategic buying has the buyers capitalize on the discount offered during a short period of time Increases variance to the manufacturer

20. Managing Navy Careers Problems in Supply Chains: The Bullwhip Effect Solutions Every Day Low Price (resisted by several grocery chains, P&G) Special purchase contract. Manufacturer may keep the high-low pricing practice, but synchronize purchase and delivery schedules.

21. Managing Navy Careers Think of sailor quality as the obverse of price. Are higher quality recruits available at particular times of the year? Do these timing patterns persist throughout careers? Does the pattern of summer moves contribute to this problem?

22. Managing Navy Careers Can we change? If the rewards are high then we can. Rewards to whom? Sailors Commands Navy Detailers

23. Managing Navy Careers – A Model A set of jobs N ={1,2,…, n} is to be assigned to a set M={1,2,…,m} of sailors. Each job is assigned to exactly one sailor. There may be additional resource constraints. The cost of assigning job j to sailor i is given by Dij, and the objective is to find an assignment having minimum cost.

24. Managing Navy Careers – A Model min ΣiεM ΣjεN Dij xij subject to ΣiεMxij = 1 , jεN, xij = 0 or 1, iεM, jεN.

25. Managing Navy Careers – A Model Let Si(to) be the vector of attributes of sailor i at time to (to is shortly after the sailor reports to a new job).  Let Si(t1) be the vector of attributes of sailor i at time t1 (t1 is shortly before the sailor rotates out of a job, estimated by the sailor’s PRD).  Ii(to, t1) = Si(t1) - Si(to) = Fj(Si(to), to, t1) is the investment (experience and training) in sailor i during current job.

26. Managing Navy Careers – A Model Let Rj be the list of attributes that are desirable for job j, one of these is the take up month for the job. Let Cij(t2) = Gj(Si(t2) - Rj) be the cost to command j of assigning sailor i at time t2 where t2 - t1 is the time in route between jobs.  Ti(t1, t2) = Si(t2) - Si(t1) = h(Si(t1), t1, t2) Training enroute between commands results in the h function.

27. Managing Navy Careers – A Model Aij(t2) = ai(Rj) The cost to the sailor of being assigned to job j. Bij(t2) = bi(Si(t1), Ti(t1, t2), Rj) The cost to the Navy of assigning sailor i to job j Dij = Aij(t2) + Bij(t2) + Cij(t2) Total cost of assigning sailor i to job j