Cross-training policies for team cost and robustness

- We examine cost versus robustness tradeoffs of multiple cross training strategies.
- We consider robustness for cross training to cover both demand mix and absenteeism.
- Tradeoffs exist, whereby minimizing costs may cause unmet demand.
- Equalizing cross training is more robust than solely minimizing costs.

We assess alternative cross-training policies for work-teams considering cost, and levels of cross training. The policies are assessed with respect to their robustness to demand-mix variation and absenteeism coverage. We employ simulation to examine instances where cross training can be used to help meet a fixed demand scenario, and with instances where cross-training can help to meet demand mix variability. Current results indicate that when minimizing cross-training costs, policies related to equalizing the cross-training level among the workforce, may provide improvement in terms of robustness without additional cost. We also assess the effects of some environmental factors, demand mix-coverage, absenteeism coverage, and job-task correlation.