Proceedings of the 2016 Winter Simulation Conference
T. M. K. Roeder, P. I. Frazier, R. Szechtman, E. Zhou, T. Huschka, and S. E. Chick, eds.Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus states that people provide “the Navy and Marine Corps’ greatest edge” (Mabus, 2015). To help recruit and manage this dynamic workforce of more than 300,000 active duty Sailors, the Navy uses mathematical models and simulation to assess the potential impacts and risks of changes to force structure, budgets, policies, and the economy. One important model is the Planned Re-source Optimization (PRO) model. PRO is currently being used to inform recruiting resourcing decisions. The decisions may involve, for example, advertising, enlistment bonuses, number of production recruiters, etc. A limitation of PRO is the lack of an interface to facilitate extensive experimentation. This paper summarizes an effort underway to enhance the analytic utility of the PRO model by embedding it in a data farming environment. This enhanced tool is called the “Planned Resource Optimization Model with Ex-perimental Design” (PROM-WED)