Team formation: Matching quality supply and quality demand

Abstract

One of the problems in sports and human resources management is the scouting or headhunting of new team members to fill open positions and to enhance the quality of the team. Also to measure whether everyone is on the right place, meaning that (the supply of) all qualities of the employees are optimally matched with the demanded functional requirements, has only been done so far through intuition and common sense. Moreover, good teamwork is indispensable for reaching the top. With the model presented in this paper it is possible to support the design of optimal teams and to calculate the value-added of potential new team members. We pay special attention to the formulation of the model and the use of the system for soccer and volleyball. Soccer is chosen because the team formation hinges on few restrictions, while volleyball is used to illustrate the modeling process in more complicated situations where the positions are not fixed and relationships between positions and players are crucial. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.