Corporate manpower planning

In this paper the necessity of corporate manpower planning is discussed and the growing interest in it within many organizations. In particular medium and long term forecasting in rather large and structured organizations are explained and the need for tools to get a survey of the evolution of their personnel strength. These tools should help management and staff-members of a planning or personnel department to design alternative policies concerning promotions, recruitments, etc.We will present a planning method which satisfies these requirements. The interactive manpower planning system FORMASY presents forecasts concerning the evolution of the personnel strength and makes it possible to assess the impacts of alternative policies. This planning system is based on a Markov model and is being used on a general purpose computer in several Dutch organizations, both industrial and governmental.FORMASY has proved its value for practical manpower planning which will be explained by means of a case-study with the Royal Dutch Airforce.