Optimum labor requirements planning model for cross-utilization of workforce

This paper presents a resources requirements planning model by using the policies of interchanging of production and maintenance operators as a means permitting flexibility. Given that the production personnel can help carry out, entirely or partly, certain actions of maintenance, the resources requirements planning aims at determining the necessary number of operators to carry out the various actions of maintenance. Due to the randomness of the equipment failure as well as the demand, this leads to a stochastic case. The paper presents an analytical model to determine the size of the necessary manpower over the planning horizon which minimizes the total cost under capacity constraints. Numerical results are presented for a particular case of the problem