Capacity Expansion for an IT Service Firm under ExponentialDemand Growth with Skilled Workforce

摘要

This paper examines an IT service firm that ownscapacity and wishes to meet an identified exponential demandgrowth over finite horizon. As IT service industry is one of theprofessional service industries, the capacity of the firmdependents on not only the quantity and technology level ofequipments but also the quantity and skills of human resources.The typical capacity expansion literature has focused on theexpansion of equipment capacity, but ignoring the workforceaspect. On the other hand, the manpower literature has onlyfocused on staffing decision. We attempts to unify the twostreams of research by developing a general model thatconsiders expansion of equipments as well as hiring and trainingdecision, together with lead times and economics of scale. As thecomplexity of the model, a genetic algorithm (GA) is applied tosolve the problem.