An Integer Linear Programming based Optimal Faculty Training Strategy: A Case Study

Abstract

The ability of appropriate decision making is crucial to the success of an organization. Decision- making requires the identification of all alternatives of the problem and selecting the best of the available alternatives. The application of operations research techniques helps seeking the optimal choice from among several possible alternative courses of action or strategies. This piece of work aims to determine the optimum number of faculty members (lecturers, assistant professors, associate professors and professors) to be selected for a faculty training program, from amongst the four Faculties of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro, with the intent to minimize the cost of training. This paper presents a mathematical model for each of the four Faculties of the University. Integer Linear Programming (ILP), an operations research technique, was used to solve the models to achieve the optimum results.