Simulating approach based optimal manpower planning in an employee leasing center and the approximate algorithm

This paper studies the issue of manpower planning in an employee leasing center and optimizing the size of the contract employees. The center considered in this paper not only leases the contract employees to the firms but also acts as an agent for temporary employees outside the center in the manpower market. Between the two types of employees, one type with mixed skills can be substituted for the other type to work. The demand for the employees from the firms needing workforce and the supply of temporary employees outside the center are both stochastic. Firstly, based on the rule of maximizing the overall profit of the center and under substituting strategies, we present a discrete stochastic optimization model to maximize the sizes of two types of employees. Then we prove the existence and necessary conditions of the optimal solution by using the marginal analysis method and we also develop an optimal algorithm to calculate the optimal solution. Because of the high time complexity of the optimal algorithm, we develop an efficient approximate algorithm based on computer simulation approach. The simulating experiments show that the approximate algorithm greatly reduces computing time, and the approximate optimal solutions found by the approximate algorithm has strong approximate effectiveness and robustness.