A proposed mathematical model for the personnel scheduling problem in a manufacturing company

Abstract

In the current economic and industrial conditions, with demand ever fluctuating and optimization more important in every field, designing a timetable to define a personnel schedule is not an easy task. Personnel scheduling is the process of constructing work timetables for its staff. The first part of this process involves determining the number of staff, with particular skills, needed to meet the demand. Individual staff members are allocated to shifts in order to meet the required staffing levels at different times, and duties are then assigned to individuals for each shift. It is really difficult to find good solutions to these highly constrained and complex problems and even more difficult to determine optimal solutions that minimize costs, meet employee preferences, distribute shifts equitably among employees and satisfy all the workplace constraints. In many organizations, the people involved in developing personnel scheduling need decision support tools to help to provide the right employees at the right time and at the right cost. In general, the unique characteristics of each industry and organization mean that specific mathematical models and algorithms must be developed for personnel scheduling solutions in different areas of application. There is a large number of commercial software packages but sometimes it is not possible to use these in companies with specific features. Accordingly, mathematical programming, optimization and heuristics are suggested to be utilized in order to solve the personnel scheduling problem.