Manpower Planning Research Articles

Multi-Objective Annualized Hours Manpower Planning Model : A Modified Fuzzy Goal Programming Approach

Multi-Objective Annualized Hours Manpower Planning Model : A Modified Fuzzy Goal Programming Approach

Obstetric intra-operative cell salvage: a review of an established cell salvage service with 1170 re-infused cases.

The use of cell salvage during caesarean section has been increasing steadily, although there are concerns relating to cost, a perceived risk of amniotic fluid embolism, and fetal red cell sensitisation. We present observational data from almost a decade of use of intra-operative cell salvage in obstetrics. By the end of this period, we set up cell salvage collection for >98% of all caesarean sections. From 2008 to 2017, 1170 women have had a re-infusion of cell salvaged blood with no clinical safety concerns; the median (IQR [range]) volume was 231 (154-306 [80-1690]) ml. During this time there has been a marked reduction in the number of women who were transfused allogeneic blood, as well as the amount of blood transfused. In total, 647 (55%) women have had alloimmunisation testing, with two positive cases. Quality control data indicate that the quality of blood processed from partial first bowls is no worse than that from full bowls. We discuss the costs of providing this service with regard to: staffing costs; single suction; leucodepletion filters; selectivity in the processing of collected blood; and the use of partial first bowls.

Manpower supply planning for aircraft line maintenance under stochastic incidents

ABSTRACTWe plan the manpower supply for aircraft line maintenance, taking into account two types of stochastic incidents: manpower demands for a flight and the number of aircraft needing to be serviced at one time. The problem is solved to find the shift and maintenance group combinations best suited for the given airline. The optimal aircraft maintenance certification for a crew is also analyzed to improve the entire manpower structure. In addition, the addition of temporary manpower required for actual daily operations is also considered as a part of understanding the total manpower utilized in actual operations. An integrated method including scenario generation and a stochastic model is developed to deal with the problem. Finally, we perform a case study based on operating data obtained from a major airline in Taiwan. The results and findings are compared with the airline’s current manpower plan in the discussion, and suggestions for improvement are made.

Teacher Education in India, Issues and Challenges

Teacher education is a continuous process and its pre-service and inservice components are complimentary to each other. Education is instrumental in the preparation of teachers who can in their practice ensure transformative learning,where teacher and learner, learner and learner are co constructors of knowledge. The intent of the present paper is to enhance the teacher education quality in India by focusing on the emerging issues & related concerns. Various issues of teacher education namely, institutional inertia, brand inequity, quality crisis, overgrowing establishment, rare humane and professional teachers, poor integration of skills, alienated and incompatible modes of teacher education, little contribution to higher education, domain pedagogy mismatches, identity crisis, rare innovations, stake holders' non-alignment, inadequate technology infusion, little choice base, poor research scenario, vision and vision mismatches, non-scientific manpower planning, illusive laboratories, over activism of distance open universities, invalid recognition and accreditation and no teacher education policy have been dealt on in this paper. The paper concludes that teacher education system in India that calls for revolutionary change.

A Two-Phase Branch-and-Price-and-Cut for a Dial-a-Ride Problem in Patient Transportation

In this paper, we investigate an extension of the R-DARP recently proposed by [Liu M, Luo Z, Lim A (2015) A branch-and-cut algorithm for a realistic dial-a-ride problem. Transporation Res. Part B: Methodological 81(1):267–288.]. The R-DARP, as a variant of the classic dial-a-ride problem (DARP), consists of determining a set of minimum-distance trips for vehicles to transport a set of clients from their origins to their destinations, subject to side constraints, such as capacity constraints, time window constraints, maximum riding time constraints, and manpower planning constraints. Our problem extends the R-DARP by (1) changing its objective to first maximizing the number of requests satisfied and then minimizing the total travel distance of the vehicles, and (2) generalizing the lunch break constraints of staff members. To solve this problem, we propose a two-phase branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm based on a strong trip-based model. The trip-based model is built on a set of nondominated trips, which are enumerated by an ad hoc label-setting algorithm in the first phase. Then we decompose the trip-based model by Benders decomposition and propose a branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm to solve the decomposed model in the second phase. Our two-phase exact algorithm is tested on the R-DARP benchmark instances and a set of new instances generated according to the same real-world data set as the R-DARP instances. Our algorithm quickly solves all of the R-DARP instances to optimality and outperforms the branch-and-cut proposed by Liu, Luo, and Lim. On the 42 new test instances, our algorithm solves 27 instances to optimality in four hours with the largest instance consisting of 36 requests. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2017.0772 .

Improved Manpower Planning Based on Traffic Flow Forecast Using a Historical Queuing Model

In order to promote travel safety and efficiency, many management staff are engaged to provide service to avoid long queues. Those manpower demands unavoidably introduce overstaffing, which is a great waste during off-peak period. However, it is not easy to precisely forecast the traffic flow to better arrange road management manpower and eliminate queuing phenomenon. In this paper, vehicle flow is first predicted with high accuracy based on the historical multi-source traffic data. The traffic data are collected for one month to establish a forecasting model. The forecasted traffic flow is tested on the following week and shows that the hourly traffic flow can be predicted in high accuracy. Improved manpower planning strategy is proposed based on the predicted results for arranging working schedule correspondingly. The proposed method is tested on a randomly selected toll gate in a real scenario as an example. A manpower planning strategy is verified with scheduled number of operating toll lanes. The improved manpower planning shows that the proposed method effectively reduces manpower by 40% at the toll gate and saves 67.5 working hours in one week compared with the current schedule. The successful application of the manpower planning method can be extended to other toll gates and service plazas to save manpower for more efficient and intelligent operation manner.

AN EVALUATION OF MANPOWER TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT IN STERLING BANK PLC, LAGOS STATE

Manpower development has been described as the systematic process which a bank has to go through to ensure that it has the effective managers it requires to meet its present and future needs. The objectives of the study is to access the manpower and development, selection and training programmes and from and to conduct an empirical investigation through a review of the manpower planning and development policy of the bank industry. This was because various alternative explanatory variables that were not easily quantified were used. Finally, it was recommended that as a result of importance of manpower planning and development, Banks should endeavour to always provide funds to enable its staff to participate in training and development programmes and based on the established positive relationship between training and Bank’s performance vis-à-vis profit after tax, bank should always vote a reasonable proportion of its profits to training and development of its employees.

DECISION-MAKING AND MANPOWER PLANNING PROCESSES: IMPLICATIONS FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Officers in public authorities regularly make administrative decisions as part of delivering services to the public. Sometimes, the decision-maker is required to exercise some discretion when making a decision. Here, the decision-maker has a choice about whether to act or not to act; to approve or not to approve, or to approve with conditions. The role of a decision-maker is to make a judgment, taking into account all relevant information. On the other hand, Manpower planning (human capital development) involves investments in education, training, health and other social services that will boost the capacity of labour. It also refers to the process of acquiring and increasing the number of persons who have the skills, education and experience that are critical for the economic growth and political development of a country (Okojie, 1995:44). This study therefore draws insights into the Meaning, Characteristics, Rationale, Assumptions, Types, Bases, Hindrances and Essentials of Decision-making. It also focuses on its Objectives and Importance as well as Manpower Planning Process. This paper is very essential to managers owing to the fact that it reveals ways of attaining national development and industrialization through decision-making and manpower planning.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH-EAST INDIA: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

In the 21st century, the crucial challenge of North-Eastern states will be how to strike a balance of the economy of the region with that of rest of India and also to ensure ecological balance. The real wealth of a nation is the human resource of the country. The basic aim of development of a country is to create environment for the people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives. But we often forgot this real truth in the pursuit of material and financial gain. The result is the destruction and diminishing of our natural resources, which must be combated. With the present paradigm, Human Development is the only alternative to have sustainable development. Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that aims to human development without damaging environment and without disturbing the rights of future generations. Since the objective of development for a nation is to improve the welfare of its people, every nation strives hard not only to increase her wealth and productive resources but also to ensure a better standard of living for her citizens by providing them with adequate food, clothing, housing, medical facilities, education, etc. Manpower planning indicates planning of human resources for meeting development needs of the country. Just for the proper utilization of manpower resources, a country should impart proper education to its population and train its labour force in technology, engineering, management, medicine and in many other fields connected with the development of various aspects of the economy.

A new continuous time optimal control model for manpower planning with promotion from inside the system

The aim of this paper is to face the manpower planning problem from a continuous time optimal control perspective. A new continuous-time manpower planning model is proposed in which the promotions occur inside the system. The proposed model contains four main sections: applicants, newcomers, experienced employees and supervisors (or managers). Each of these sections has a target value which we try to attain them by applying appropriate control variables, such as lay off, degradation, promotion and retirement. To attain the targets, we formulated an optimal control problem using a linear system transition equation with a quadratic cost functional. Finally, the proposed model is applied for a real-world organization as a case study.

Deterministic Conversion of Uncertain Manpower Planning Optimization Problem

Manpower planning is a very important component of human resource management. However, there are many indeterminate factors that should be taken into consideration in manpower planning. For example, the decision of employees to quit the job is determined by their preference, which is beyond the control of human resource department. It can be realistically modeled as a random variable when the historical data of quitting rate are large enough. Otherwise, it can only be regarded as an uncertain variable when the historical data are inadequate. In this paper, we discuss a manpower planning optimization problem for a manufacturing company with hierarchical system, where the quitting rate of employees is modeled as an uncertain variable. First, we formulate a mathematical model for this uncertain manpower planning optimization problem, where the influence on the production outputs by employees is taken into consideration. Second, we present a deterministic conversion method to transform this uncertain manpower planning optimization problem into an equivalent deterministic discrete-time optimization problem. It is further converted into an equivalent linear programming model with an equality constraint and an inequality constraint. Finally, we use the real data from Singapore, Denmark, and China to carry out a numerical simulation and make a comparison with the results obtained based on stochastic model to show the advantages of our method.

Using AHP, DEA and MPI for governmental research institution performance evaluation

ABSTRACTUnder situations of limited resources, soft powers such as technology development and innovation become critical capabilities for a nation’s continuous growth and sustainability. Therefore, we used analytical hierarchy process (AHP), data envelopment analysis (DEA), and Malmquist productivity index (MPI) to evaluate the performance of research projects in 6 main fields of study managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) in Taiwan from 2002 to 2012. Among the 6 fields of study, Agriculture and Humanities were two research fields as efficiency; and the sequence of inefficiency 4 fields were sociology, medicine, science, and engineering. Although the field of sociology was inefficiency, it was the only field show continuous growth in result of MPI analysis. Taking the fields as a whole, the result of the analysis of total factor productivity showed recession. However, as seen from the growth in technical change and in scale efficiency change, the MOST was effective to a certain extent during the period. However, the recession in technical efficiency change showed that further improvement in the planning and distribution of manpower and funds is needed.

A two-stage skilled manpower planning model with demand uncertainty

PurposeHuman resources are one of the most important and effective elements for companies. In other words, employees are a competitive advantage. This issue is more vital in the supply chains and production systems, because of high need for manpower in the different specification. Therefore, manpower planning is an important, essential and complex task. The purpose of this paper is to present a manpower planning model for production departments. The authors consider workforce with individual and hierarchical skills with skill substitution in the planning. Assuming workforce demand as a factor of uncertainty, a two-stage stochastic model is proposed.Design/methodology/approachTo solve the proposed mixed-integer model in the real-world cases and large-scale problems, a Benders’ decomposition algorithm is introduced. Some test instances are solved, with scenarios generated by Monte Carlo method. For some test instances, to find the number of suitable scenarios, the authors use the sample average approximation method and to generate scenarios, the authors use Latin hypercube sampling method.FindingsThe results show a reasonable performance in terms of both quality and solution time. Finally, the paper concludes with some analysis of the results and suggestions for further research.Originality/valueResearchers have attracted to other uncertainty factors such as costs and products demand in the literature, and have little attention to workforce demand as an uncertainty factor. Furthermore, most of the time, researchers assume that there is no difference between the education level and skill, while they are not necessarily equivalent. Hence, this paper enters these elements into decision making.

Regression Analysis Based Effective Manpower Planning Methodology: A Case Study

Adequate staff-students ratio (SSR) is one of the important National Universities Commission (NUC) prescribed criteria to be implemented in manpower planning by Universities in Nigeria. Forecasting manpower requirement has been used for economic planners and even the academic sector. In other to avoid imbalance, the manpower requirement is very vital in determining the desired output in a system. This study is aimed at predicting the adequate manpower required in a unit of an academic institution. Manpower related data of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Federal University of Technology, Akure Nigeria were collected. The data collected includes manpower capacity and students population over a period of thirteen consecutive years. The regression analysis based model was formulated and applied to analyze the collected data. Based on the analyzed data, trends of , , and are obtained respectively for the student's population size, lecturers and technical staff requirements, where and X are economic indicators. The obtained trends equations were then subsequently applied to compute SSRs and recommendations were made. The developed model was implemented in a computer software, using the Visual Basic programming language, in order to facilitate its solution procedure. The outcome of this study will aid the management of the institution in effective manpower determination and students number projection in future years. This will also assist the institution to plan for effective SSR based on the recommendation of NUC.

Optimal Recruitment Policy for Manpower Planning Using Equilibrium Distribution

Optimal Recruitment Policy for Manpower Planning Using Equilibrium Distribution

New Deterministic Solution to a chance constrained linear programming model with Weibull Random Coefficients

Linear Programming model is an important tool used to solve constrained optimization problems. In fact, the real life problems are usually occurring in the presence of uncertainty. For instance, in managerial problems of assigning employees to different tasks with the aim of minimizing the total completion time, or maximizing the total productivity, which are better described as random variables. Therefore, the use of the Probabilistic Linear Programming model with random coefficients has drawn much attention in recent years. One of the most frequently used approaches to solve the Probabilistic Linear Programming model is the Chance Constrained Linear Programming approach. In this paper, a Chance Constrained Linear Programming model with Weibull random coefficients is proposed. The proposed model is introduced in the Bivariate form with two of the L.H.S technologic coefficients are random variables. Moreover, the performance of the proposed model is shown through an application of allocating recruitment in Manpower Planning so as to optimize the jobs' completion time. The obtained results are compared with the results of another model that depends on approximating the distribution of the sum of Weibull random variables to the Normal distribution. This comparison verified the good performance of the new proposed model.

Industrial Economy: How Africa Should Industrializee

Continual Africa reliance to allegedly “good” policies to industrial growth from the Developed countries and the international development policy establishment (IDPE) such as the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO) and donor governments such as (DFID and IFC) may further capacitate Africa’s failure to industrialize. Allegedly “good” policies have not been able to generate the PROMISED growth dynamism in the Developing countries growth during the decades of its implementation. When Africa emerged from its long economic hibernation around the turn of the 21st century, African industry was no longer competing with the high-wage industrial “North,” as it had in the 1960s and 1970s. From the historical facts about the developmental experience of the Developed countries (official history of capitalism), it is evident that “it is when a country has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade”. African countries are not already on the frontier of technological development, as such, protective duties and restrictions are inevitable if Africa is to turn the corner in its current industrial development QUEST, contrary to intentionally misguided belief of free trade. Export subsidies, tariff rebates on inputs used for exports, conferring of monopoly rights, cartel arrangements, directed credits, investment planning, manpower planning, R&D support and promotion of institutions for public-private co-operation are additional tools suggested in the article in regards to Africa’s industrial and development success.

System dynamics-based approach to manpower planning: a study of Indian microfinance institutions

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the manpower planning process of Indian microfinance institutions (MFIs). The paper describes a model that can assist management of MFIs to deal with the challenges microfinance organisations face in case of manpower planning. In this study, a system dynamics-based model has been developed for manpower planning and the model estimates the requirement of staff members and executives at different levels under various scenarios that will help the organisation in designing effective strategy to successfully manage their human resource strategically. The research methodology is in accordance with the principles of system dynamics. The model has been developed using iThink software and has been validated by computing root mean square error between the actual values of the variables and the model generated values. The study will help the microfinance organisations to plan, manage and strategically focus on manpower planning in its desired direction.

A hybrid heuristic algorithm for the sequencing generalized assignment problem in an assembly line

The generalized assignment problem (GAP) is an enlarged version of the classical assignment problem in which the assignment of several tasks to an agent is possible. The only restriction that can limit the assignment of the tasks to the agents is the capacity of the agent. In this study, a manpower planning is modeled as a GAP in an assembly line. The considered assembly line consists of a number of workstations in series where each workstation contains several jobs in parallel. The present research seeks to assign the best operator to the jobs in order to minimize the processing time in each workstation and in the whole of the system. The generalized assignment formulation is adapted to this case. A mixed-integer mathematical model is proposed for this problem and proved that the considered problem is NP-complete. The model is solved in various sizes by employing Gurobi mixed-integer solver. This paper presents a greedy heuristic combined with a local search for the generalized assignment problem. The slight deviation from the optimal solutions and the computational times which is extremely reduced, validate the efficiency of the proposed heuristic approach for solving such problems.

Training and development mechanism in southern railway central workshop, Ponmalai, Tiruchirappalli, Tamilnadu, India

Human Resources Management is related to the continuous process of man power planning, selection, performance appraisal, salary administration, training and management development. Training is a systematic modification of behavior through learning, which occurs as a result of education, instruction, development and planned experience. Training is job-oriented. Training is the act of improving one's knowledge and skill that leads to improve their job performance. It bridges the gap between what the employee has and what the job demands. This development helps to understand the cause and effect relationship, synthesize from experience, visualize or think logically. The survey focuses on the effectiveness of training and development programme, towards employees, working in Central Railway Workshop, Ponmalai, Tiruchirappalli.