Work Force Size and Single Shift Schedules with Variable Demands

Article Abstract:

In recent years, labour negotiations for seven-day-week organizations such as hospitals, mining companies and chemical industries have seen an increased emphasis on improving shift schedules. This paper gives an exact lower bound on the number of workers required to satisfy such primary contractual commitments as ensuring that each employee receives at least A out of every B weekends off, everyone works exactly five days per week, and no one works more than six consecutive days. The model addressed is general in that it allows the number of workers required each day to vary. The proof that the bound is the best possible is constructive. A linear time algorithm is presented that generates schedules satisfying all the primary objectives. Extensions discuss means of incorporating secondary objectives such as giving pairs of adjacent days off. (Reprinted by Permission of Publisher.)

Algorithms, Business planning, Algorithm, Production, Scheduling, Manpower Planning

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Work force size and single shift schedules with variable demands

Article Abstract:

Labor negotiations for seven-day-week organizations have emphasized improving shift schedules. A general formulation of the single shift problem is addressed, where the demands can vary from day to day, in a weekly cycle, and each employee is to have a certain number of weekends off in a cycle of a given number of weeks. The solution provided has three key results: (1) the algorithm presented is iterative rather than cyclic, and no 'master rotation' will be produced; (2) a manager can calculate the actual workforce size algebraically without having to produce schedules to determine whether the number of workers will be sufficient; and (3) a simple algorithm for shift scheduling is produced by giving a constructive algorithm to prove the sufficiency of the lower bounds. A number of examples and several important extensions and implications of the theory are presented.

Human resource planning

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Scheduling the general job-shop

Article Abstract:

A family of algorithms of a branch and bound type is described for finding optimum schedules for job shops. The algorithms have a complete schedule associated with each node of the search tree, and branching from nodes is based on important conflicts in the schedule. Representative results and benchmark problems are presented.

Machine shops

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