Affiliations: School of Management Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics, Collaborative Innovation Center for Aeronautical Economic Development of Henan Province, Zhengzhou, Henan, China E-mail: liuhuizhen830@126.com
Abstract: Cross-utilization of workers has been used in
manufacturing and service settings to produce higher throughput, lower
inventory, shorter cycle times, and/or improved service without significant
additional investment in equipment and labor. However, cross-trained workers
may not be as productive as home workers in carrying out their tasks because
of a new work environment and unfamiliar protocols in the new department.
This leads to the research question: What is the impact of cross-utilization
on optimal workers staffing decision. In the paper, we investigate the
effect of the worker cost, the penalty factor and the worker efficiency, on
a two-department, full-flexibility configuration, and develop a general
framework which consists of a two-stage stochastic programming model. The
framework may help in trade-offs between worker costs and met demands in
both manufacturing and service settings. The Stage 1 optimization model is
to minimize the total cost, and the Stage 2 model seeks to minimize the
penalty, which is quantified by the unmet demands mathematical expectation
during assigning two-skill workers across departments. We derive a general
expression for the optimal quantity of workers staffed in two departments
when their demands follow corresponding uniform distributions. From the
numerical simulations, in the two perfectly symmetrical departments with
increasing demand in one department the quantity of workers optimized in the
department increases and the total cost increases, while the worker's
quantity optimized in the other remains the same. In addition, studies also
show that the total cost is more affected by the upper limit of the demand
distribution than the lower limit of that.
