Year
2006
Abstract
Systems exist to achieve some purpose, and there will always be interest in improving system effectiveness. This is particularly important in systems that protect assets. After the events of September 11, 2001, there have been enormous expenditures at many levels aimed at creating and improving protection and security systems; however, little has been done to understand how to optimize the operating effectiveness of these systems. This work models a particular type of protection system and uses example data to illustrate a methodology for systems optimization using a common spreadsheet tool called Excel Solver. The proposed model creates a dual optimization problem that allows the analyst to minimize a given constraint (such as cost) for a specified value of effectiveness, or to maximize effectiveness for the given constraint limit.