Research Reports from the Department of Operations

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

10-19-1964

Abstract

Recent developments in allocation theory may be applied to research management decision problems in the firm. Of major importance to firms employing engineers in new product development activities are problems involving the specification and allocation of resources such as manpower, funds, equipment, and facilities. To solve these problems, quantitative measures of organizational performance must be derived that are consistent with corporate goals and that include the relevant resource variables, noncontrollable variables, parameters, and constraints. Mathematical models are constructed and solved in this paper that yield solutions for allocating manpower resources to projects. A scoring model is constructed and then used to determine the important factors in a profitability model. The significant elements in the decision process are the uncertainty in estimating model parameter values and the optimal utilization of limited engineering manpower resources where this uncertainty exists.

Keywords

Operations research, Resource allocation, Decision making--Mathematical models, Engineering--Management, Project management--Mathematical models, Business planning, Research and development projects--Management, Performance standards--Mathematical models, Mathematical optimization

Publication Title

Reprinted from the journal "Operations Research", vol. 13., no. 4, July-August 1965 ; Technical Memorandums from the Department of Operations, School of Management, Case Western Reserve University

Issue

Technical memorandum no. 144

Rights

This work is in the public domain and may be freely downloaded for personal or academic use

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