A Minimum Risk Manpower Scheduling Technique

An approach to decision making under uncertainty is presented and its application to manpower scheduling discussed. The Minimum Risk technique yields an optimum series of manpower levels over a time interval in which the workload (manpower required for each period) is not known. It is assumed that the possible workloads can be described, defined by a finite set of mutually exclusive manpower requirements, and their probabilities can be estimated. Each possible workload is examined and the risk of a particular manpower level is related to the added (transition) cost of performing whatever workload occurs, given this manpower level.

The subject technique represents a decision-making tool which has been applied to engineering and scientific personnel planning for over one year. Accordingly, some of the operational aspects of the method are discussed. Linear cost functions and subjective probabilities are used and some practical characteristics of such a formulation are also described.