Optimum Allocation of Research/Engineering Manpower within a Multi-Project Organizational Structure

An analytic technique has been formulated which permits the management of an organization engaged in a number of research and engineering projects to allocate available technical manpower among and within projects. The technique has value as a device to determine in detail where men with specific skills may be best utilized and as a tool to gage the impact of proposed additional workload on available manpower resources and projects in progress. The technique makes use of the basic network analog to designate the sequence and interaction of the detailed activities making up each project. Judgments must be made by engineering management of the minimum essential manning and maximum productive manning required for each network activity to obtain the time-manpower function and its range of feasible values. The scheduled time for completion of each project must be stated as well as the total available manpower by skill, by time period. An integer solution is attained which is compatible with the available manpower constraint and which represents a practical economic optimum. The technique used is an iterative method suitable for computer computation.