Simulation-based Analysis of Military Workforce Planning Strategies

Abstract

The success of any organization, either commercial or government, depends heavily on the execution of effective workforce planning. An effective workforce plan should achieve simultaneously both organizational and employee objectives by recruiting, promoting and deploying the right employees in the right places at the right times. In this study, we particularly focus on a military workforce planning problem, which brings additional challenges due to its closed (i.e., experienced workforce is generated within the system rather than recruited from outside) and strictly hierarchical (i.e., career advancements happen step-by-step, along the pyramidal rank chain) structure. To support workforce planning, we develop a decision-support system based on a system dynamics (SD) simulation model with the specific objective of evaluating different workforce planning strategies. As opposed to the existing military workforce models which assume steady state conditions, the proposed approach also considers the interactions among the demand-side (e.g., operational requirements and schedules) of the system and the supply-side (e.g., recruitment and promotion strategies). We demonstrate the approach through a case study to gain insight into how the different parameters affect the overall system with regards to output metrics such as the operational readiness of a fleet.