Optimal allocation of support to small manufacturing enterprises in defense projects

Small and medium enterprises play a vital role in projects to develop Australian military systems. Their recognized lack of systems engineering capability, however, can impart risk to the projects in which they participate, unless funding is allocated appropriately to them to improve their systems engineering capabilities. In this work we determine an optimal funding allocation to these enterprises that will minimize risk to the projects by formulating this funding allocation as an assignment problem and then solving it using the Taguchi method.