Input Policies for a Longitudinal Manpower Flow Model

This paper formulates a general longitudinal manpower flow model and poses the problem of scheduling the inflow of manpower for an infinite number of periods subject to constraints on the stocks and inflows of manpower and the size of the manpower system. The objective is to minimize the present value of the costs of system operation. A finite linear program is introduced which can calculate a lower bound on the optimal value of the infinite problem. The optimal solution of the finite linear program can be used to construct a sound and easily implemented policy for the infinite problem.