Resource allocation

In strategic planning, a resource-allocation decision is a plan for using available resources, for example human resources, especially in the near term, to achieve goals for the future. It is the process of allocating resources among the various projects or business units.

The plan has two parts:. Firstly, there is the basic allocation decision and secondly there are contingency mechanisms. The basic allocation decision is the choice of which items to fund in the plan, and what level of funding it should receive, and which to leave unfunded: the resources are allocated to some items, not to others.

There are two contingency mechanisms. There is a priority ranking of items excluded from the plan, showing which items to fund if more resources should become available; and there is a priority ranking of some items included in the plan, showing which items should be sacrificed if total funding must be reduced.

Resource Levelling
The main objective is to smooth resource requirements by shifting slack jobs beyond periods of peak requirements. Some of the methods essentially replicate what a human scheduler would do if he had enough time; others make use of unusual devices or procedures designed especially for the computer. They of course depend for their success on the speed and capabilities of electronic computers.


 * 1) Burgess, A.R. & Killebrew, J.B., Variation in Activity Level on a Cyclical Arrow Diagrams, Journal of Industrial Engineering, Volume 13, March-April 1962.
 * 2) de Witte, L., Manpower Levelling of PERT Networks, Data Processing for Science and Engineering, Volume 2, 1964.
 * 3) Wilson, R.C., Assembly Line balancing and Resource Scheduling’ presented in University of Michigan Summer Conference, Production and Inventory Control, 1964.

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