Timothy E. Trainor

Building Knowledge From Organizational Experience: Approaches and Lessons Learned From US Army Base Camp Workshops

Abstract: Capturing, transferring, and building upon knowledge in an organization is a difficult but necessary function to ensure the organization continues to learn and grow. This article discusses how a large organization with disparate operating elements can learn from experience. This is illustrated through a case study of the US Army enhancing learning for its organizations involved in developing base camps to support military forces worldwide. This was done through a series of workshops that led to the creation of a knowledge management system. Knowledge management provides useful methods and tools to improve learning in organizations, which can help facilitate change. The engineering manager can use this article and the lessons learned from our base camp experience as a framework to enhance learning in an organization whose functional elements are varied in terms of mission and location.

Going Green at West Point: Is It Economically Beneficial? A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Installing a Wind Farm at the United States Military Academy

Abstract: In 2007, BQ Energy communicated an idea to the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, NY, about the construction of a 12.5 MW wind farm for electricity production on the western edge of its property in the training grounds near Camp Buckner. Such a project would bring educational, strategic, and potentially economic benefits to USMA, in addition to the obvious environmental benefits that would be realized by the Hudson Valley region. This article describes a quantitative approach to answer why it is financially beneficial for West Point to allow the installation of a wind farm on its property.

The US Army Uses Decision Analysis in Designing Its US Installation Regions

Senior leaders responsible for managing US Army installations asked the United States Military Academy to analyze the regional organization of the US Armys Installation Management Agency (IMA) and recommend alternatives. They wanted an analysis of IMAs use of four geographical regions to manage installations in the continental United States. We interviewed stakeholders to identify the functions of the IMA regional organization. We used decision analysis to define the potential value added of various regional alternatives by measuring how well each alternative would perform the functions. The measures captured the effectiveness and efficiency of the regional organization for each function. We then developed and evaluated several regional alternatives (one region, two regions, three regions, four regions, five regions, and eight regions). Using decision analysis, we showed that four was a reasonable number of regions to manage installations effectively. We demonstrated that decreasing the number of regions below four would significantly reduce the value regions added to installation management and increasing the number would provide little additional benefit.

Work In Progress: College Faculty Development - Systems Engineering and the West Point Way

Over half of the instructors at the United States Military Academy are rotating military faculty members who are officers in the U.S. Army. Most have obtained advanced degrees from some of the most prestigious universities in the nation and are obligated to teach three years at West Point. By virtue of their leadership experiences and educational qualifications, these officers constitute a valuable resource. They not only teach a majority of the cadets at West Point, but they also serve as exemplary role models for the cadets. However, exceptional military service and impeccable academic credentialing do not necessarily confirm that these officers will be knowledgeable and proficient undergraduate instructors. Therefore, prior to the start of each academic year the Department of Systems Engineering conducts a faculty development workshop aimed at ensuring rotating faculty members enter their first classroom assignments as capable, competent, and confident instructors

Risk-Based Decision Support of Water Resource Management Alternatives

Enhancing public welfare through the deliberate management of water resources is vital for every society. Pollution, overuse, and consumption challenge a societys ability to develop and sustain water supplies for municipal, agricultural, industrial, and recreational use while protecting fisheries and wetlands. Water resource management decisions are complex and involve risk. This paper identifies a risk taxonomy to help managers identify where those risks are and their severity. It is presented in the context of the Susquehanna River Basin that spans three states in the United States, with management interests at the state, regional, and national levels.

The US Army Projects the Effect of Merit Pay on Payroll Growth

The National Security Personnel System (NSPS) was designed to provide greater opportunity for merit-based pay raises than the preexisting civil service system. However, a US Army organization was concerned that over time the accumulation of merit raises would make the total payroll unaffordable. We were asked to investigate the conditions under which this situation would be likely to happen. We used the Vensim® modeling software to produce a model of the influences and events that would cause payroll to rise or fall from year to year. Our analysis showed that the merit pay policies in place at the start of our study were very likely to lead to undesirable growth in total pay and a concentration of all employees near the maximum allowed salary, defeating the purpose of NSPS—to reward better service with more pay. The most important factors were the fraction of merit pay that was given as merit raises (as opposed to bonuses) and the salaries of people newly hired to replace those who left the organization. We showed how departing senior employees should be replaced with less-senior ones to avoid long-term payroll growth. We used the model to find the combinations of merit pay and new-hire policies that would balance the effect of these two major influences and produce little or no long-term payroll growth. We also showed that some other influences that had concerned the client were actually of small effect compared to the stochastic uncertainty in payroll growth. Another influence, attrition, produced a more substantial effect. The interactive nature of the model allowed real-time exploration of alternatives with the client and helped build confidence in the robustness of the results. These results highlight potential problem areas needing careful analysis in implementing similar merit pay systems.

2005 BRAC Attribute Analysis

In 2005, the Department of Defense completed its fifth round of base realignment and closure (BRAC). This process involved analytically determining the military value (MV) of an installation and then ranking all installations based on MV scores. These rankings were used to determine which installations would be closed or realigned, subject to meeting minimum Army requirements for maintaining certain functions. In 2005, the MV score for an installation was derived as a weighted sum of the installations score over a set of forty attributes. This paper describes the methods we used in analyzing these attributes, our goal being to identify the attributes that had the greatest impact on the installation rankings. From our analysis, we developed recommendations on which attributes should be kept for future BRAC proceedings, as well as those that could be considered for revision

Transportation safety and risk assessment

The overall objective of this work is to create and test a military application of a transportation safety assessment tool for industry. The industry tool, the Fleet Operations Safety Assessment Tool (FOSAT) is being refined and is scheduled for implementation by an insurance company. The same process for evaluating safety in industry can aid the military in assessing and improving safety practices in ground transportation operations. Data generated from testing the military application will be used to develop methods for forecasting improvements in safety performance metrics. The test results will also be used by the insurance industry to refine the FOSAT.