Personnel Scheduling Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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- Tabu Search, Genetic Algorithm, Nurse rostering, Empirical evidence

- by Patrick Causmaecker
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- Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, Scheduling, Business and Management

Due to its complexity, its challenging features, and its practical relevance, personnel scheduling has been heavily investigated in the last few decades. However, there is a relatively low level of study on models and complexity in these important problems. In this paper, we present mathematical models which cover specific aspects in the personnel scheduling literature. Furthermore, we address complexity issues by identifying polynomial solvable and NP-hard special cases.

- by Peter Brucker
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- Multidisciplinary, Personnel Scheduling

In many real-world scheduling problems (eg. machine scheduling, educational timetabling, personnel scheduling, etc.) several criteria must be considered simultaneously when evaluating the quality of the solution or schedule. Among these criteria there are: length of the schedule, utilisation of resources, satisfaction of people's preferences and compliance with regulations. Traditionally, these problems have been tackled as single-objective optimisation problems after combining the multiple criteria into a single scalar value. A number of multiobjective metaheuristics have been proposed in recent years to obtain sets of compromise solutions for multiobjective optimisation problems in a single run and without the need to convert the problem to a single-objective one. Most of these techniques have been successfully tested in both benchmark and real-world multiobjective problems. However, the number of reported applications of these techniques to scheduling problems is still relatively scarce. This paper presents an introduction to the application of multiobjective metaheuristics to some multicriteria scheduling problems.

C all centers are an increasingly important part of today's business world, employing millions of agents across the globe and serving as a primary customer-facing channel for firms in many different industries. Call centers have been a fertile area for operations management researchers in several domains, including forecasting, capacity planning, queueing, and personnel scheduling. In addition, as telecommunications and information technology have advanced over the past several years, the operational challenges faced by call center managers have become more complicated. Issues associated with human resources management, sales, and marketing have also become increasingly relevant to call center operations and associated academic research.

- by Bella Pinto
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- Information Technology, Operations Management, Human Resource Management, Outsourcing

Many organizations face employee scheduling problems under conditions of variable demand for service over the course of an operating day and across a planning horizon. These organizations are concerned with the tour scheduling problem that involves assigning shifts and break times to the work days of employees and allocating days off to individual work schedules. Nowadays, organizations try to adopt various scheduling flexibility alternatives to meet the fluctuating service demand. On the other hand, they have also realized that providing employee productivity and satisfaction is as much important as meeting the service demand. Up to date, tour scheduling solution approaches have neglected considering employee preferences and tried to develop work schedules for employees in a subsequent step.

- by Seyda Topaloglu
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- Mathematical Sciences, Goal programming, Personnel Scheduling

Personnel rostering has received ample attention in recent years. Due to its social and economic relevance and due to its intrinsic complexity, it has become a major subject for scheduling and timetabling researchers. Among the personnel rostering problems, nurse rostering turned out to be particularly complex and difficult. In this paper, we propose a notation for nurse rostering problems along the lines of the α|β|γ notation for scheduling. The system allows extension as well as refinement. It is the aim of the notation to facilitate problem description, classification and systematic study. It enables authors to position the problems in the vaster body of research on the subject. By developing this notation for nurse rostering, we hope that an extension of it will be applicable to a broader domain of personnel rostering.

- by Patrick Causmaecker
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- Applied Mathematics, Scheduling, Business and Management, Nurse rostering

The objective of project task scheduling is to determine task start dates and durations to complete a project on time with the minimum cost of performing tasks plus overhead. By altering task start dates and durations, the daily labor-demand pro®le can be changed. The objective of personnel scheduling is to determine how many workers must be assigned to each feasible days-o tour to satisfy a given labor-demand pro®le with minimum labor cost. Integrating these two problems permits the simultaneous determination of start dates, durations, labor levels and required tours for a minimum-cost and on-time schedule. Both integer programming and heuristic solution procedures to solve the integrated problem are presented. In a series of 20 test problems, the heuristic procedure outperformed the traditional two-step scheduling procedure by reducing the cost of labor and overhead by 8.6%.

- by Hesham Alfares
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- Engineering, Mathematical Sciences, Personnel Scheduling, Task Scheduling

In this study we investigate the problem of assigning tasks to operators in a facility characterized by longitudinal parallel machines such as in a shop ﬂoor served by an overhead travelling crane. Given a master production schedule (MPS) the objective is to assign all the jobs scheduled on the machines (i.e., the tasks) to the operators in order to ﬁll to capacity the available workforce minimizing the distance between operators and tasks. In the model we assume that one task, i.e., a particular production job processed by a particular machine, must be entirely completed by a single operator. Diﬀerent levels of automation of the machines are considered, from manual machines that require a permanent employee to highly-automated machines where a single operator can oversee several machines. During the setup time or repair time of a machine the operator is considered free to operate on the remaining tasks assigned to him, if any. On the basis of the MPS the number of operators is pre-deﬁned in the long-term planning horizon taking in consideration a ﬁxed mean transfer time between the tasks, that are the diﬀerent production jobs on diﬀerent machines. This value has a huge uncertainty because it is highly inﬂuenced by the tasks allocation. In fact a simultaneous multiple allocation means a continuous back and forth of the operator between his assigned machines. The objective of the model is the maximization of the operators utilization through minimizing the operator-task distances. The backlogged work is not admitted, therefore each day is independent of the other days, so a daily staﬃng is modelled.
The study arises from a speciﬁc real-world problem but it could be easily extended to other contexts in which the operator-task allocation is subject to spatial-layout considerations. In general, non-optimized operators’ travel times may result in production losses, i.e., machine blocking and work in progress.

- by Luca Zeppetella
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- Manpower, Manpower Planning, Personnel Scheduling

Zeynep Aksin • Mor Armony • Vijay Mehrotra College of Administrative Sciences and Economics, Koc University, Rumeli Feneri Yolu, 34450 Sariyer-Istanbul, Turkey Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, West 4th Street, KMC... more

- by Vijay Mehrotra
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- Business, Information Technology, Operations Management, Human Resource Management

Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality is focusing on smart city applications for its service strategies and ap- plications and the quality of services in all the areas is reconsidered and rebuilt with this focus in mind. The concept of Intelligent Transport emerged to make citywide transportation more secure and sustainable and to provide road and traffic conditions continuously to drivers, passengers, and pedestrians along with traffic management units. In Istanbul Electric Tram and Tunnel Administration (IETT), Personnel Performance Improvement System was based on manual and only on the evaluation of the personnel by the senior staff. Since 2016, there is a new personnel evaluation model implemented to evaluate all the personnel. Perfor- mance-Based Job Assignment Model appears to have successful results. In 2017, this model was rewarded with the international award in the category of the Best Advance in Workforce Planning and Management. This new performance assessment model resulted in the fulfillment of a social achievement with the im- provement of the performance of the drivers complementing the satisfaction of the passengers. In this study, this new personnel assessment model is being analyzed and the work around this new model is evaluated along with the results of the model’s implementation. In addition, this study explores how this new model contributes both to intelligent transportation systems and the city of Istanbul.

This paper presents HyFlex, a software framework for the development of cross-domain search methodologies. The framework features a common software interface for dealing with different combinatorial optimisation problems and provides the algorithm components that are problem specific. In this way, the algorithm designer does not require a detailed knowledge of the problem domains and thus can concentrate his/her efforts on designing adaptive general-purpose optimisation algorithms. Six hard combinatorial problems are fully implemented: maximum satisfiability, one dimensional bin packing, permutation flow shop, personnel scheduling, traveling salesman and vehicle routing. Each domain contains a varied set of instances, including real-world industrial data and an extensive set of state-of-the-art problem specific heuristics and search operators. HyFlex represents a valuable new benchmark of heuristic search generality, with which adaptive cross-domain algorithms are being easily developed and reliably compared.This article serves both as a tutorial and a as survey of the research achievements and publications so far using HyFlex.

- by Luca Zeppetella
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- Manpower, Manpower Planning, Personnel Scheduling

- by Gabriela Ochoa
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- Computer Science, Operations Research, Heuristic Search, Artificial Intelligent

This article is about a multi-agent based algorithm for personnel scheduling and rescheduling in a dynamic environment of a paced multi-product assembly center. The purpose is first to elaborate daily employees' assignment to workstations so as to minimize the operational costs as well as personnel dissatisfactions; the second is to generate an alternative planning when the first solution has to be rescheduled due to disturbances related to absenteeism. The proposed approach takes into account individual competencies, mobility and preferences of each employee, along with the competency requirements associated with each assembly activity, with respect to both the current master assembly schedule and the line balancing for each product. We use solutions obtained through a simulated annealing algorithm in order to benchmark the performance of the multi-agent approach. Experimental results show that our multi-agent approach can produce high-quality and efficient solutions in a short computational time.

This paper presents an evolutionary multi-objective simulation-optimization system for personnel scheduling. The system is developed for the Swedish postal services and aims at finding personnel schedules that minimizes both total man hours and the administrative burden of the person responsible for handling schedules. For the optimization, the multi-objective evolutionary algorithm NSGA-II is implemented. In order to make the optimization fast enough, a two-level parallelisation model is being adopted. The simulation-optimization system is evaluated on a real-world test case and results from the evaluation shows that the algorithm is successful in optimizing the problem.

Nurse rostering is a complex scheduling problem that affects hospital personnel on a daily basis all over the world. The need for quality software solutions is acute for a number of reasons. In particular, it is very important to efficiently utilise time and effort, to evenly balance the workload among people and to attempt to satisfy personnel preferences. A high quality roster can lead to a more contented and thus more effective workforce. In this review, we discuss nurse rostering within the global personnel scheduling problem in healthcare. We begin by briefly discussing the review and overview papers that have appeared in the literature and by noting the role that nurse rostering plays within the wider context of longer term hospital personnel planning. The main body of the paper describes and critically evaluates solution approaches which span the interdisciplinary spectrum from operations research techniques to artificial intelligence methods. We conclude by drawing on the strengths and weaknesses of the literature to outline the key issues that need addressing in future nurse rostering research.

- by Pio Chibuzor
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- Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, Scheduling, Business and Management

An important challenge within hyper-heuristic research is to design search methodologies that work well, not only across different instances of the same problem, but also across different problem domains. This article conducts an empirical study involving three different domains in combinatorial optimisation: bin packing, permutation flow shop and personnel scheduling. Using a common software interface (HyFlex), the same algorithms (high-level strategies or hyperheuristics) can be readily run on all of them. The study is intended as a proof of concept of the proposed interface and domain modules, as a benchmark for testing the generalisation abilities of heuristic search algorithms. Several algorithms and variants from the literature were implemented and tested. From them, the implementation of iterated local search produced the best overall performance. Interestingly, this is one of the most conceptually simple competing algorithms, its advantage as a robust algorithm is probably due to two factors: (i) the simple yet powerful exploration/exploitation balance achieved by systematically combining a perturbation followed by local search; and (ii) its parameter-less nature. We believe that the challenge is still open for the design of robust algorithms that can learn and adapt to the available low-level heuristics, and thus select and apply them accordingly.

- by Jose rodriguez
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- Flow Shop Scheduling, Hyper-heuristics, Heuristic Search, Optimization

In this paper, an integer programming model for the hierarchical workforce problem under the compressed workweeks is developed. The model is based on the integer programming formulation developed by Billionnet [A. Billionnet, Integer programming to schedule a hierarchical workforce with variable demands, European Journal of Operational Research 114 (1999) 105-114] for the hierarchical workforce problem. In our model, workers can be assigned to alternative shifts in a day during the course of a week, whereas all workers are assigned to one shift type in Billionnet's model. The main idea of this paper is to use compressed workweeks in order to save worker costs. This case is also suitable for the practice. The proposed model is illustrated on the Billionnet's example problem and the obtained results are compared with the Billionnet's model results.

- by hady alle
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- Operations Research, Modeling, Integer Programming, Scheduling

The problem of finding a high quality timetable for personnel in a hospital ward has been addressed by many researchers, personnel managers and schedulers over a number of years. Nevertheless, automated nurse rostering practice is not common yet in hospitals. Many head nurses are currently still spending several days per month on constructing their rosters by hand. In recent years, the emergence of larger and more constrained problems has presented a real challenge because finding good quality solutions can lead to a higher level of personnel satisfaction and to flexible organisational procedures. Compared to many industrial situations (where personnel schedules normally consist of stable periodic morning-day-night cycles) health care institutions often require more flexibility in terms of hours and shift types. The motivation for the research presented in this paper has been provided by real world hospital administrators/schedulers and the approach that we describe has been implemented in over 40 hospitals in Belgium. This paper consists of two main contributions:

- by sanja petrovic
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- Cognitive Science, Health Care, Tabu Search, Personnel Management

The quest for robust heuristics that are able to solve more than one problem is ongoing. In this paper, we present, discuss and analyze a technique called Evolutionary Squeaky Wheel Optimization and apply it to two different personnel scheduling problems. Evolutionary Squeaky Wheel Optimization improves the original Squeaky Wheel Optimization's effectiveness and execution speed by incorporating two additional steps (Selection and Mutation) for added evolution. In the Evolutionary Squeaky Wheel Optimization, a cycle of Analysis-Selection-Mutation-Prioritization-Construction continues until stopping conditions are reached. The aim of the Analysis step is to identify below average solution components by calculating a fitness value for all components. The Selection step then chooses amongst these underperformers and discards some probabilistically based on fitness. The Mutation step further discards a few components at random. Solutions can become incomplete and thus repairs may be required. The repair is carried out by using the Prioritization step to first produce priorities that determine an order by which the following Construction step then schedules the remaining components. Therefore, improvements in the Evolutionary Squeaky Wheel Optimization is achieved by selective solution disruption mixed with iterative improvement and constructive repair. Strong experimental results are reported on two different domains of personnel scheduling: bus and rail driver scheduling and hospital nurse scheduling.

Abstract: Users of hospital personnel planning software cope with the complex task of translating their needs into several constraints of a very different nature and with differing cost parameters. We present a multi criteria evolutionary... more

- by Patrick Causmaecker
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- Nurse rostering, Personnel Scheduling, CEC

Users of hospital personnel planning software cope with the complex task of translating their needs into several constraints of a very different nature and with differing cost parameters. We present a multi criteria evolutionary approach,... more

- by Patrick Causmaecker
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- Nurse rostering, Personnel Scheduling, CEC

This paper deals with the problem of nurse rostering in Belgian hospitals. This is a highly constrained real world problem that was (until the results of this research were applied) tackled manually. The problem basically concerns the assignment of duties to a set of people with different qualifications, work regulations and preferences. Constraint programming and linear programming techniques can produce feasible solutions for this problem. However, the reality in Belgian hospitals forced us to use heuristics to deal with the over constrained schedules. An important reason for this decision is the calculation time, which the users prefer to reduce. The algorithms presented in this paper are a commercial nurse rostering product developed for the Belgian hospital market, entitled Plane.

- by Patrick Causmaecker
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- Tabu Search, Constraint Programming, Product Development, User preferences

- by Jose Rodriguez
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- Flow Shop Scheduling, Hyper-heuristics, Heuristic Search, Optimization
- by Peter Demeester
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- Personnel Scheduling

This article is about a multi-agent based algorithm for personnel scheduling and rescheduling in a dynamic environment of a paced multi-product assembly center. The purpose is first to elaborate daily employees’ assignment to workstations so as to minimize the operational costs as well as personnel dissatisfactions; the second is to generate an alternative planning when the first solution has to be rescheduled due to disturbances related to absenteeism. The proposed approach takes into account individual competencies, mobility and preferences of each employee, along with the competency requirements associated with each assembly activity, with respect to both the current master assembly schedule and the line balancing for each product. We use solutions obtained through a simulated annealing algorithm in order to benchmark the performance of the multi-agent approach. Experimental results show that our multi-agent approach can produce high-quality and efficient solutions in a short com...

- by Bushra Sabar
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- Engineering, Computer Science, Agent Based, Multi Agent System

This paper presents a review of staff scheduling and rostering, an area that has become increasingly important as business becomes more service oriented and cost conscious in a global environment.Optimised staff schedules can provide enormous benefits, but require carefully implemented decision support systems if an organisation is to meet customer demands in a cost effective manner while satisfying requirements such as flexible workplace agreements, shift equity, staff preferences, and part-time work. In addition, each industry sector has its own set of issues and must be viewed in its own right. There are many computer software packages for staff scheduling, ranging from spreadsheet implementations of manual processes through to mathematical models using efficient optimal or heuristic algorithms. We do not review software packages in this paper. Rather, we review rostering problems in specific application areas, and the models and algorithms that have been reported in the literature for their solution. We also survey commonly used methods for solving rostering problems.

- by Pio Chibuzor
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- Multidisciplinary, Decision support system, Cost effectiveness, European

We propose in this paper a novel integration of local search algorithms within a constraint programming framework for combinatorial optimization problems, in an attempt to gain both the efficiency of local search methods and the flexibility of constraint programming while maintaining a clear separation between the constraints of the problem and the actual search procedure. Each neighborhood exploration is performed by branch-and-bound search, whose potential pruning capabilities open the door to more elaborate local moves, which could lead to even better approximate results. Two illustrations of this framework are provided, including computational results for the traveling salesman problem with time windows. These results indicate that it is one order of magnitude faster than the customary constraint programming approach to local search and that it is competitive with a specialized local search algorithm.

- by Wim Nuijten
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- Applied Mathematics, Combinatorial Optimization, Heuristics, Tabu Search

- by Wim Nuijten
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- Applied Mathematics, Combinatorial Optimization, Heuristics, Tabu Search

In an attempt to ensure good-quality printouts of our technical reports, from the supplied PDF files, we process to PDF using Acrobat Distiller. We encourage our authors to use outline fonts coupled with embedding of the used subset of all fonts (in either Truetype or Type 1 formats) except for the standard Acrobat typeface families of Times, Helvetica (Arial), Courier and Symbol. In the case of papers prepared using TEX or LATEX we endeavour to use subsetted Type 1 fonts, supplied by Y&Y Inc., for the Computer Modern, Lucida Bright and Mathtime families, rather than the public-domain Computer Modern bitmapped fonts. Note that the Y&Y font subsets are embedded under a site license issued by Y&Y Inc. For further details of site licensing and purchase of these fonts visit

- by Uwe Aickelin
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- Heuristic Search, Local Search, Nurse rostering, Personnel Scheduling

- by Hesham Alfares
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- Engineering, Mathematical Sciences, Personnel Scheduling, Task Scheduling

- by Jose Rodriguez
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- Hyper-heuristics, Heuristic Search, Local Search, Search Algorithm

Hospital personnel scheduling deals with a large number of constraints of a different nature, some of which need to be satisfied at all costs. It is, for example, unacceptable not to fully support patient care needs and therefore a sufficient number of skilled personnel has to be scheduled at any time. In addition to personnel coverage constraints, nurse rostering problems deal with time related constraints arranging work load, free time, and personal requests for the staff. Real-world nurse rostering problems are usually over-constrained but schedulers in hospitals manage to produce solutions anyway. In practice, coverage constraints, which are generally defined as hard constraints, are often relaxed by the head nurse or personnel manager. The work presented in this paper builds upon a previously developed nurse rostering system that is used in several Belgian hospitals. In order to deal with widely varying problems and objectives, all the data in the model are modifiable by the users. We introduce a set of specific algorithms for handling and even relaxing coverage constraints, some of which were not supposed to be violated in the original model The motivation is that such practices are common in real scheduling environments. Relaxations enable the generation of better quality schedules without enlarging the search space nor the computation time.

- by Patrick Causmaecker
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- Practice theory, Personnel Management, Nurse rostering, Patient Care