A VFT Approach to Allocation of Manpower and Budget Cuts

The National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC), like many Department of Defense (DoD) and civilian organizations, has been forced to undergo budget and manpower reductions. This year's resource allocation decision requires NAIC to identify both contracts and personnel to be cut. In order to reduce the amount of time and subjectivity involved in this important decision, a resource allocation model was developed to compare different alternatives. This model uses decision analysis with value-focused thinking to quantify the resultant impact of the chosen cuts. The impact was quantified based upon the NAIC Commander's values and preferences, which were used to build a value hierarchy. Each of the 60 contracts, as well as the 5, 10, 15 and 20% manpower cuts for the 18 organizations within NAIC, were evaluated against 49 attributes, which represented the Commander's values.