Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 276519, 12 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/276519
Research Article

The Number of Students Needed for Undecided Programs at a College from the Supply-Chain Viewpoint

Jin-Ling Lin,1 Jy-Hsin Lin,2 and Kao-Shing Hwang3

1Department of Information Management, Shih Hsin University, Taipei 11678, Taiwan
2Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Information, Huafan University, Taipei 223, Taiwan
3Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan

Received 30 October 2011; Revised 11 March 2012; Accepted 25 April 2012

Academic Editor: Yi-Chung Hu

Copyright © 2012 Jin-Ling Lin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The objective of this study is to determine how to do forward-looking analysis to determine the future need for various professionals, so that educational institutes can produce an appropriate labor force for national development. The concept of component part commonality, which derives from research on effective inventory management using material resource planning (MRP), can also be applied to human resource planning and educational resource management in higher education systems. Therefore, this paper proposed a systematic method to analyze student recruitment numbers for future needs, based on the concept of MRP. The research studied the relationship between a curricular structure tree and the associated commonalities. It explored the relationship between the commonality of students and the aggregated level of student replenishment. Based on that, systematic guidelines for curriculum design can be established for undeclared programs at collages. Two simple examples were used to illustrate the implementation of MRP in analysis of the replenishment levels (necessary safety stock levels) in an education system such as an engineering college.