It should be a problem in Operations Management area. However, if your boss calls it a forecasting problem, it is a forecasting problem. Whatever he calls is fine and it is not important.

It is not clear what you mean "workforce assignment". Does it mean when you close and upgrade one facility, all workforce in this facility has to be assigned to other facilities? Or other facilities which take care of demand by this facility need to hire more people? What is your objective function? Does the order of closing facilities play a role here?

Overall, it should be able to formulate it as an integer program problem. Depends on how many facilities you have, if only a few, you might be able to solve it using EXCEL; otherwise, you need comercial software such as CPLEX. Or maybe you can solve one facility by one facility.
Hope this is helpful. Good luck

多谢回复！非常有用！ >1. It is not clear what you mean "workforce assignment". Does it mean when you close and upgrade one facility, all >workforce in this facility has to be assigned to other facilities? Or other facilities which take care of demand by this facility >need to hire more people? It means how many people need to be hired to do the upgrade for one power plant. So far, the existing staff is not considered. They may be relocated to other places or merged to the new group or just laid off. >2.What is your objective function? It seems time is not a major issue. Probably they want to minimize the cost. >3.Does the order of closing facilities play a role here?   Yes. Because the plants are different. Some are traditional, some are nuclear. Therefore, the order may cause difference. Anyway, I agree with you. If the problem is clearly defined, it could be solved by simple software such as Excel or CPLEX. If the conditions are dynamicly changing, it may require ERP systems. I did not see a lot of sense in JDA or Demantra. Correct me if I am wrong. ***我的任务不是解决这个问题，而是给公司一个关于软件guideline。头倾向于不买这些软件，希望用Excel解决问题。JDA和Demantra都是million $级别的软件。*******

多谢回复！非常有用！

>1. It is not clear what you mean "workforce assignment". Does it mean when you close and upgrade one facility, all >workforce in this facility has to be assigned to other facilities? Or other facilities which take care of demand by this facility >need to hire more people?

It means how many people need to be hired to do the upgrade for one power plant. So far, the existing staff is not considered. They may be relocated to other places or merged to the new group or just laid off.

>2.What is your objective function?
It seems time is not a major issue. Probably they want to minimize the cost.

>3.Does the order of closing facilities play a role here?  
Yes. Because the plants are different. Some are traditional, some are nuclear. Therefore, the order may cause difference.

Anyway, I agree with you. If the problem is clearly defined, it could be solved by simple software such as Excel or CPLEX. If the conditions are dynamicly changing, it may require ERP systems.

I did not see a lot of sense in JDA or Demantra.

Correct me if I am wrong.

***我的任务不是解决这个问题，而是给公司一个关于软件guideline。头倾向于不买这些软件，希望用Excel解决问题。JDA和Demantra都是million $级别的软件。*******

>However, if your boss calls it a forecasting problem, it is a forecasting problem. Whatever he calls is fine >and it is not important.

他们不光这样叫，他们选software也是以此为基础的。我看他们做的报告，比较的是JDA，Demantra的价格，另外也提到了SAS。而且请JDA做的Slide里边的例子，就是饮料销售的预测。完全是一个时间序列分析的典型例子。和我们的这个project完全不搭界。你看这几个软件能做这个问题么？

My major is Operations Research, so I am not familiar with those softwares. My opinion is if you don't know your problem very well, those softwares are useless. They might can produce some fancy tables or figures. However, I think it is just garbage in, garbage out. The reason that companies are keeping spending lots of money on softwares is those people always have execuse even they do a very bad job: "No forecast is accurate".