Holonic Workforce Allocation To Reduce The Impact Of Absenteeism And Turnover
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Date
2011-05
Authors
Lim, Yong Ching
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Holonic Manufacturing System (HMS) adopts Arthur Koestler’s generalisation
on living organisms and social organisations into a novel paradigm that suits the
manufacturing industry. Autonomy and cooperation are the prime attributes of holons.
The holonic concepts have been applied to many areas, and yet, rarely attempted on
workforce allocation. Hence, this scientific research is intended to develop a duallevel
advisory model called Holonic Workforce Allocation Model (HWM) in order to
deal with absenteeism and turnover. The first level, termed as pre-active planning,
uses the exponential smoothing technique to forecast the number of operators required
on a variety of tasks. The second level is called reactive allocation and is associated
with a weighted randomised formulation that can provide cross-training opportunities
in parallel with specialisation requirements. With the aid of mock-up data, case study
and computer simulation, HWM has been experimented in several scenarios and been
compared with some models commonly used in manufacturing. The experimental
results show that HWM has the capability to determine the workforce size according
to demand and is more effective than the others in minimising task overdue rate,
improving average skill level, as well as providing moderate workload balance and
cross-training chances. With such outcome, incorporating holonic attributes into
workforce allocation is promising, while its application can be extended to other forms
of labour-intensive manufacturing such as assembly cells and production flow lines.
Description
Keywords
Holonic Workforce Allocation , deal with absenteeism and turnover