Human resource scheduling: |an application of linear programming in an audit firm

Abstract

In a developing business society,human resources become the most valuable asset of the firms day by day.Considering this fact,most of the companies do not hesitate to make huge investments in this area. On the other hand, effective and efficient utilization of these rare and expensive resources creates problems for managements. In this study, I aim to solve human resource scheduling problems that a worldwide auditing firm face by structuring a linear programming model. In general, auditing firms perform audit work on companies' financial statements as at year-end or any time in order to prepare a report which indicates whether the company's records were done in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and legal requirements.At each step of the audit work, an intensive involvement of human resources from different levels is necessary.Due to the importance of human resources' contribution to the work done,auditing firms invest big amounts for human resources and related systems.Effective and efficient utilization of human resources which is considered an important management problem for service firms, can be achieved by planning the allocation of resources to works for specific periods through out the whole working period.In an auditing firm,efficiency of any resource is measured by chargebility percentage which can be calculated for a period by dividing the total working hours of the resource that can be invoiced to the client by the total hours that the auditing firm paid for the resource.Auditing firm management aims to maximize chargebility for each one of its resources. In this study, a 0-1 Linear Integer Programming (IP) model which aims to maximize chargibility was formulated.The integer programming problem was solved by an implicit enumeration algorithm after certain modifications. A computer program in Fortran 77 was written for the algorithm and executed on a CDC computer system. At the end of the process, jobs that maximize the chargibility when they are scheduled were determined.