Optimizing Portfolio-Level Modernization Investment: An Overview of the Aim Point Investment Model (APIM)

Abstract

This report introduces the Aim Point Investment Model (APIM), an optimization tool for portfolio-level resource allocation across U.S. Army programs and time. The report is intended to provide a technical overview of the model and its capabilities but also details the motivation for creating the model and recommendations from related research. The recommendations should be of interest to decisionmakers and those interested in improving decision support tools for asset allocation problems. This section briefly describes the resource allocation problem faced by Army leaders allocating billions of dollars among hundreds of equipping programs each year and outlines the approach and tool we developed to help solve this problem. In brief, the projects objective was to build a method and tool to support quick-turn exploration of modernization investment portfolios in light of changing budget constraints and operational priorities in order to develop rough-order optimal investment strategies across a preestablished set of investment options and a set of budget and requirement assumptions. Given the enormous complexity of the decision space, some sort of automated decision support tool was required. To build that decision support tool, the team explored alternative approaches to extracting the information needed about programs relative utility and any constraints on the Army's ability to procure the capability from existing data. This report describes one of these approaches, which uses Army prioritization guidance synthesized from several sources combined with plausible constraints to produce resource allocation solutions that were at least consistent with the Army's stated modernization strategy.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 28, 2023
Accession Number
AD1197076

Entities

People

  • Dulani Woods
  • Duncan Long
  • Emily Yoder
  • Jeremy M. Eckhause
  • Katharina L. Best
  • Lauren A. Mayer
  • Liam Regan
  • M. W. Markel
  • Michael J. Vermeer
  • Nathaniel Edenfield
  • Tony Nuber

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Army Budgets
  • Army Procurement
  • Budget Estimates
  • Budgets
  • Chemical Weapons
  • Data Visualization
  • Department Of Defense
  • Financial Management
  • Integer Programming
  • Investments
  • Mathematical Programming
  • Military Budgets
  • National Security
  • New York
  • Operations Research
  • Optimization
  • Procurement
  • United States

Readers

  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.

Technology Areas

  • Space