About ORCEN
The Operations Research Center (ORCEN) was established in 1988 in order to leverage West Point’s analytical capabilities in support of the Army. A small cadre of full time analysts from the Systems Engineering Department and one analyst from the Department of Mathematical Sciences take on projects for various Army analytical agencies. This work not only supports the Army, but also provides a rich set of problems for faculty development and for potential transition to cadets in the education program.
Significant support for the ORCEN comes from Program Executive Office (PEO) – Soldier. With this support, the ORCEN has helped them with challenges such as developing simulation capabilities, analyzing design aspects of the Land Warrior command and control system, budget planning, and distribution of Rapid Fielding Initiative equipment for deploying soldiers. In addition to this work, the ORCEN performs reimbursable research in support of other Army and Department of Defense organization. It has developed competencies for a wide variety of analytical challenges, to include the following areas: - Cost estimation studies
- Simulation studies
- Analysis of the Army personnel system
- Human factors experiments and analysis
- Simulation development and integration
- IT system requirements and prototyping
- Conditions based maintenance
- Unmanned aircraft systems analysis
- IED defeat studies
In order to support these advanced research projects, the Department of Systems Engineering’s lab complex provides capabilities for group collaboration, combat simulation, virtual immersion, information visualization, and secure classified computing.The importance of systems in the military and the private sector is rapidly expanding. The study of systems has far reaching impact on joint readiness among the U.S. armed services. By leveraging the intellectual capital of our faculty members and cadets, the ORCEN established itself early on and continues to remain at the forefront of systems research in the Army. |