Optimal allocation of students to naval nuclear-power training units

摘要

Nuclear-powered submarines are staffed by personnel who are rigorously trained for this purpose. The US Naval Nuclear Propulsion Training Program develops, certifies, and delivers the nuclear-operator qualification training for enlisted and officer personnel who manage the nuclear fleet. This training is conducted in one of the four nuclear-power training units (NPTUs). This article presents the mixed-integer linear program (MILP) developed for allocation of students to each of the institutions during the start of each program and the benefits derived from such allocations. At the end of the rigorous one year training various trade certificates are issued such as electrician's mate, machinist mate, electronics technician, engineering laboratory technician and engineering officer of the watch. The training includes knowledge improvement as well as hands-on training. A student is certified to operate a particular area of the nuclear propulsion plant only after demonstrating the skill required for the specific area of operation. Before the NPTU training program, the students undergo a six-month program in a nuclear school, mainly classroom training. After this, the students are given six months training in one of the four NPTUs. Each NPTU has two training sites and each training site has two units. The NPTU training includes class-room, simulator, and hands-on training. Delays in NPTU training can occur due to limited resources which produces student's backlogs. These backlogs are seriously monitored by the Navy leadership. Each group of students who are trained together are identified by the number such as class 1501 refers to the first class started in the fiscal year 2015. Normally each raining plant is allocated students from the class number. However there may be some exceptions of students from more than one class attending a plant together. The NPTU training consists of seven weeks classroom phase and seventeen weeks hands-on phase. Hands-on training is critical since the students should be capable of performing the tasks with the required safety conditions on the nuclear reactor. There are five types of instructors and the students arrive in batches at predefined intervals. Staff instructors come and go from the Navy based on their other assignments. Normally the assignment to NPT from Navy is for three years. It is desirable to allocate as many students as possible in a class but this has to satisfy various constraints such as resources and student's qualification etc. the student allocation is done using the training capability model (TCM), a MILP prescribing all the requirements for the training. Prior to the introduction of TCM an iterative approach coupled with expert knowledge was used for this purpose. As the number of students required to be trained are on increase year by year the need for a better approach for allocation became necessary. This led to the development and implementation of TCM in NPTUs. (32 refs.)