The title of this book is Techniques in Corporate Manpower Planning: Methods and Applications. Manpower planning, also called personnel plan­ ning, implies the analysis of possible discrepancies in the future between personnel demand and supply. Personnel demand will also be called person­ nel requirement; and personnel supply, personnel availability. The notion of corporate manpower planning refers to the planning of personnel on the level of an industrial or governmental organization. As such, it does not stand for manpower planning for branches of industries or labor market studies of countries or international communities. One type of manpower planning is the planning of short-term succes­ sions of managers or the assignment planning of positions for individual employees for the next year. In fact, this type of short-term manpower plan­ ning is always executed, whether formally or informally, centrally or other­ wise. Another type of manpower planning, however, may be executed to match the requirement for and availability of personnel for the medium and long term. This type of manpower planning considers groups of employees rather than individuals. Our goal is to consider medium- and long-term manpower planning for groups of employees. We call this the multicategory vii Vlll PREFACE approach to manpower planning. In our view, this medium-and long-term personnel planning provides the conditions for individual manpower plan­ ning or for personnel development.