Manpower Planning with Uncertain Requirements

This paper examines a longitudinal model of a manpower system. The demand for effective manpower is determined by the state of a finite Markov chain. There are delays in training effective manpower, and effective manpower is an input to the training process. Thus it is not always available to meet demand. We present an operational method for calculating optimal accession policies. This calculation can in turn be used to find the equilibrium operating rules for the system. The model is a useful device for measuring the impact of alternate assumptions about continuation rates, manpower utilization policies, demand levels, and transition probabilities in the demand process.