Section Threewere anticipated. During this phase, the model was used for
decisions on a daily basis. Following this period, there was a
recession that changed the situation from shortages to
surpluses of employees and the company needed to reduce the
number of employees by 700. Fortunately, information from the
model helped decision makers discover that the solution to the
problem could come from attrition of current employees. By
modeling human resource flows through Markov analysis,
Weyerhaeuser was able to reduce its employee surplus within
15 months through attrition rather than layoffs. In subsequent
years, the company used the technique to examine flows of
exempt personnel within its separate divisions. A weakness of
Markov analysis was revealed when small numbers of
employees in the various job categories prevented effective
utilization of the technique.^67