The purpose for which and organization is established usually determines how the organization will be set up in terms of office space, plant requirement and layout (if any), organization structure, management philosophy to mention a few. This research was carried out with the aim of applying established quantitative methods to the redesign and optimisation of the organisation structure of a steam power plant. This is in dissonance with usual empirical strategies that were deployed in the past.
The existing organization structure was examined in light of the work content, this was used to estimate the number of operation level personnel (N0) and the human dynamic interactions rate (λ, μ). These estimates were then used to solve and maximize for the personnel utilization objective function (H). It was a non-linear constraint maximization problem.
The organization’s operating labour man-hours was found to be 98285.149 and the operation level personnel (N0) was found to be 135 persons supervised and managed by 14 and 5 persons respectively.
After optimization, the redesigned organization structure had a personnel utilization of 97.91% and a personnel cost saving of 49.6% which led to the conclusion that the redesigned structure outperformed the existing structure.
KEY WORDS: Organization structure, Personnel utilization, Optimization, Management Levels