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A control rule for recruitment planning in engineering consultancy

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Abstract

The most valuable asset of a professional service firm is its people. Owing to the high labor turnover, staffing decision is very critical in its operations. We take engineering consultancy as a professional service and emphasize the importance of developing knowledge stock of skilled consultants in a planned manner for efficient productivity management. Our focus is management of knowledge-mix, which is the mix of consultants at different productivity levels. Our model is designed to determine the steady-state number of consultant-mix to meet demand at a desired service level. This is done through the use of control theory and chance constrained programming.

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Correspondence to Sanjeev K. Bordoloi.

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Bordoloi, S.K. A control rule for recruitment planning in engineering consultancy. J Prod Anal 26, 147–163 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11123-006-0010-x

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