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.