Personnel planning in concurrent engineering: A case study

Personnel planning is traditionally one of the last activities in the proce ss of bringing a product to the market. This can lead to a lack of necessar y knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) on the shop floor often causing de lays at the start of production. In Concurrent Engineering (CE), planning a ctivities are integrated and information is frequently exchanged to avoid s uch problems. As job design determines the requirements for personnel plann ing, this article presents a method for integrating job design and personne l planning. This method makes it possible to define personnel requirements in early phases as well as designing jobs to the availability of personnel. It is based on a tool for modeling the task structure in the early phases, when information is still poorly defined, continuously adapting the task m odel to increasing levels of detail, and a method of directly deducing from the task structure the necessary KSA. The method is well suited to deal wi th poorly defined information; it allows the design of jobs, and considers personnel selection, education, and training concurrently to other planning activities. A case study is presented to demonstrate its use. (C) 2000 Joh n Wiley & Sons, Inc.