Optimizing Project Selection at the Department of Public Works, Presidio of Monterey.

摘要

Large organizations suffer from the problem of insufficient resources to complete all project requests submitted throughout the year. With the high volume of project requests received and the limited resources available, picking those projects to fund that return the highest value to the organization can be a daunting task. The purpose of this research is to help management make an optimal decision, and determine whether the introduction of an Excel-based optimization model would benefit an organization in its selection process. This research focuses on the project selection process for the Department of Public Works for the Presidio of Monterey Army instillations in the Monterey area. The results from the current fiscal year's selection process are compared with the results from the optimization model. This demonstrates how analytical tools, specifically an optimization model, can add value to an organization by increasing the number of projects selected. One of the conclusions of this thesis is that for the model to properly reflect the values of the organization, a different weighting system would be needed. Therefore, this research recommends that the optimization model be used, but only as a non-biased opinion on which projects should be selected.