Modelling large-scale manpower dynamics: An expert systems approach

Large-scale manpower planning systems are socio-technical systems that are complex in structure and dynamic in behaviour. The method of system dynamics simulation has traditionally been applied to study such problems. However, lack of data and detailed information about the system structure can become obstacles in the modelling process. We propose the infusion of fuzzy expert systems with the system dynamics simulation method to overcome such challenges. In particular, the decision-making behvior and expectation formation structures are imitated with simple fuzzy expert systems. Computational experiments and results based on an actual case study of engineering manpower training shows very encouraging results of our proposed approach.