AN AGENT-BASED MODELING APPROACH FOR STUDYING MANPOWER AND PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT BEHAVIORS

This paper describes the development of a generalized agent-based simulation tool. The subject matter of the simulation are complex organizational behaviors found within United States Navy Manpower and Personnel processes.. Behavior of such a complex system is typically associated with a hierarchical structure in which the lowest level agents are characterized by continuous and discrete event-variable dynamics and the highest level agents by heuristically based decision-making mechanisms. The system dynamics approach is used to develop a model that describes the dynamics of a sailor’s behavior while he or she is a member of the US Navy. The model illustrates how psychological factors such as stress and motivation influence a sailor’s performance and his or her decision to reenlist or to leave the Navy. This system dynamics based model constitutes a basic “microscopic” element of an agent-based model of the US Navy’s Manpower and Personnel (M&P) systems. Agent-based techniques are used to handle heterogeneity in behaviors and domain descriptions associated with shipboard behavior. The advantage of the agent-based representation is its capacity to retain all information associated with the variability and interdependency between attributes of agents which might otherwise become lost if aggregate quantities were formed directly from individual data. Complex relationships between individual sailor’s stress, motivation and performance emerge from model structure and interactions which allows us to perform analysis on two levels: 1) an aggregate level; and, 2) a lower level on which individual sailors can be dynamically modeled. Our model makes it possible to gain a deep understanding of the dynamics of the entire M&P system. We expect our tool to offer several benefits to the Navy, including the ability to design new policies for existing ships or new ships; the ability to understand the impact of shipboard technologies to increase automation; and the ability to study the impact of various interventions on sailor retention. The model also promises to be useful for personnel management in the commercial sector.