One size does not fit all: personalized incentives in military compensation

A critical element in implementing a compensation scheme including nonmonetary incentives (NMIs) is recognizing that preferences vary widely across Service members. There are at least three sources of variability: across different population classes, across individuals within a population class, and across NMI packages for a particular individual. Surveys across different military communities, ranks, and years of Service show the difficulty of identifying any NMI that has significant value for even 50% of the active duty force. At the same time, approximately 80% of the surveyed Service members expressed a significant positive value for at least one NMI. Therefore, one-size-fits-all incentive packages will not be nearly as effective as more personalized incentive packages. The authors discuss variability in Service member NMI preferences and outline an approach to implementing personalized NMI packages in military compensation through a sealed-bid reverse auction, where Service members select individual NMIs from a “cafeteria-style” menu of options.     

A survey of maintenance models: The control and surveillance of deteriorating systems

The literature on maintenance models is surveyed. The focus is on work appearing since the 1965 survey, “Maintenance Policies for Stochastically Failing Equipment: A Survey” by John McCall and the 1965 book, The Mathematical Theory of Reliability, by Richard Barlow and Frank Proschan. The survey includes models which involve an optimal decision to procure, inspect, and repair and/or replace a unit subject to deterioration in service.     

On the reliability,availability and bayes confidence intervals for multicomponent systems

The problem of computing reliability and availability and their associated confidence limits for multi-component systems has appeared often in the literature. This problem arises where some or all of the component reliabilities and availabilities are statistical estimates (random variables) from test and other data. The problem of computing confidence limits has generally been considered difficult and treated only on a case-by-case basis. This paper deals with Bayes confidence limits on reliability and availability for a more general class of systems than previously considered including, as special cases, series-parallel and standby systems applications. The posterior distributions obtained are exact in theory and their numerical evaluation is limited only by computing resources, data representation and round-off in calculations. This paper collects and generalizes previous results of the authors and others. The methods presented in this paper apply both to reliability and availability analysis. The conceptual development requires only that system reliability or availability be probabilities defined in terms acceptable for a particular application. The emphasis is on Bayes Analysis and the determination of the posterior distribution functions. Having these, the calculation of point estimates and confidence limits is routine. This paper includes several examples of estimating system reliability and confidence limits based on observed component test data. Also included is an example of the numerical procedure for computing Bayes confidence limits for the reliability of a system consisting of N failure independent components connected in series. Both an exact and a new approximate numerical procedure for computing point and interval estimates of reliability are presented. A comparison is made of the results obtained from the two procedures. It is shown that the approximation is entirely sufficient for most reliability engineering analysis.     

The reporting time problem: Integration of intelligence with verification

This article is a theoretic study of the following problem in verification: Mobile units under control of an agent, whom we call the HIDER, travel on a known transportation network and must at the conclusion of their itinerary report locations at fixed time intervals to a monitoring authority, whom we call the SEEKER. The purpose of this reporting requirement is to verify that illegal units do not infiltrate the network from sources under the control of the HIDER. We assume that the SEEKER has an independent intelligence-gathering capability which gives sightings of both legal and illegal units. The purpose of this article is to quantify the advantage of frequent over infrequent reporting. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Optimal number of minimal repairs before replacement of a system subject to shocks

A system is subject to shocks that arrive according to a nonhomogeneous Poisson process. As shocks occur a system has two types of failures. Type 1 failure (minor failure) is removed by a minimal repair, whereas type 2 failure (catastrophic failure) is removed by replacement. The probability of a type 2 failure is permitted to depend on the number of shocks since the last replacement. A system is replaced at the times of type 2 failure or at the nth type 1 failure, whichever comes first. The optimal policy is to select n* to minimize the expected cost per unit time for an infinite time span. A numerical example is given to illustrate the method. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Intellectual spring cleaning: it’s time for a military “Do Not Read” list; and some sources that should be on that list

Military reading lists, intended to promote professional reading and in turn enhance education and develop critical thinking skills and sound judgement, recommend key texts to military personnel. This is a noble intent but the lists themselves, while generally good, are not flawless. Critiques of military reading lists often focus on what sources they are missing. This article offers its own critique but from a different perspective. It does so by analysing why some sources, which have become outdated, are based on faulty or incomplete research, have been thoroughly disproven, or some combination of the above, nevertheless linger on military reading lists. It then offers a short list of such sources, which it recommends be either removed from existing reading lists or accompanied by other sources that place the original source in appropriate historical context. Where applicable, it also recommends alternative sources that provide insights into the same subject matter. In so doing, this article is intended generate debate and to assist militaries to achieve a better balance between evaluation, induction and retention of valid knowledge on one hand, and rejection of outdated or flawed knowledge on the other.     

Investment in production resource flexibility: An empirical investigation of methods for planning under uncertainty

We examine several methods for evaluating resource acquisition decisions under uncertainty. Traditional methods may underestimate equipment benefit when part of this benefit comes from decision flexibility. We develop a new, practical method for resource planning under uncertainty, and show that this approach is more accurate than several commonly used methods. We successfully applied our approach to an investment problem faced by a major firm in the aviation information industry. Our recommendations were accepted and resulted in estimated annual savings in excess of $1 million (US). © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2003