Equitably Distributing Quality of Marine Security Guards Using Integer Programming.

摘要

Established through the Marine Security Guard (MSG) Program during the 1940s, the Marine Corps and Department of State have shared a partnership of providing critical security to designated diplomatic facilities worldwide. Approximately 250 Marines execute permanent change-of-station orders within the program five times every year to support personnel manning requirements. Are these Marines being sent to the right location. Is one embassy unintentionally staffed with a disproportionate quality of MSGs. Is there a better metric to measure and assign Marines based on a decision-maker's preference. The current assignment process is manpower-intensive and involves more than 15 personnel across three levels of command. At present, there is no formal methodology to quantify or measure how well MSGs are being assigned. The purpose of this research is to provide Marine Corps Embassy Security Group (MCESG) Headquarters senior leaders with an alternative method to complement the current assignment process by equitably distributing the quality of MSGs using integer programming. The results of this research support an improvement by up to 96% of distributing quality using the sum of squared differences across each region. The impact of using these alternative methods can be expected to significantly decrease MCESG assignment man-hours.