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...wo approaches have been considered for workforce scheduling: the first approach aims at minimizing the costs of production through the number of employees required to perform a certain amount of work =-=[1, 2, 3, 4]-=-, whereas the goal of the second approach is to actually schedule the work performed by a certain number of employees with respect to a set of operational constraints, while minimizing costs. Some res...

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... for 3-day and 4-day workweek scheduling of a homogeneous workforce. Constraints are imposed on weekend work frequency, work stretch length, and transition time when changing shifts. Narasimhan (2000) considers the same problem but for a hierarchical workforce consisting of several employee categories. Burns et al. (1998) present an algorithm for 3-day and 4-day workweeks, with variable daily demand and limits on work stretch lengths. Lankford (1998) describes an actual pilot implementation of 4-day workweek schedule at the he Analytical Central Call Management (CCM) group at Hewlett Packard. Bard et al. (2003) present a model for employee tour scheduling at the US Postal Service, which can handle different days off policies, variable start times, and the use of part-time flexible workers. Alfares (2003a) presents an optimal algorithm for four-day workweek scheduling with weekend work frequency constraints. Alfares (2003b) provides manual optimal solutions for the 3-day and the 4-day workweek scheduling problems, assuming two levels of labour demands and consecutive workdays. The algorithm presented in this paper produces an optimal solution to single-shift threeday workweek scheduling problem under...

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...f tasks over a given time period. Several problem constraints and restrictions are considered when a feasible work schedule solution is developed. The objective of WSP varies depending upon the application, work environment, and work policy of the workplace. Its emphasis might be on the minimization of either the total number of workers (Alfares, 2002) or total cost (Elshafei and Alfares, 2008). WSP has been studied in various service systems, for example, the crew scheduling of the Hong Kong Light Rail Transit (Chu and Chan, 1998), the scheduling of staff at the United States Postal Service (Bard et al. 2003), and the staff scheduling in the healthcare system (Brunner and Edenharter, 2011). Typically, WSP has two different planning horizons. They are: (1) multi-period planning within one workday, and (2) multi-workday planning. The multi-period WSP focuses on assigning workers to tasks or shifts to different work periods in one workday. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management (EPPM 2013) 1117 This problem is also known as the job rotation problem in the occupational safety and health field. Sarbar et al. (2008) studied the multi-period sch...

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...a good bibliographic survey on medical staff rostering problems has appeared [12]. Several studies have utilized mathematical programming techniques to assist in finding efficient staff schedules [5],=-=[8]-=-,[11]. Callahan [10] has highlighted the effects of problem-based scheduling on patient waiting and staff utilization of time in a pediatric clinic. Further, Hariharan et al [15] have evaluated the ut...

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...like OC:Planner [Tol07]. Other work tries to solve the staff scheduling problem with integer programming tools but here only a few of the constraints, especially of the soft constraints, are regarded =-=[BBD03]-=-. Summary and Future Work Within the project a first prototype of a heuristic staff scheduler was developed which is now part of a commercial product in the staff planning area. The system combines ge...

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...ng related to the number of customers and the time of theirsarrival while taking into account the mean service times and the service providers’ illness andsvacations or the equipments’ availability ([=-=Bard et al., 2003-=-], [Kabak et al., 2008], [Pasin andsGiroux, 2005], [Ingolfsson et al., 2002], [Chevalier et al., 2004], [Duffuaa and Al-Sultan,s1999]).s3.3 Very short term planning of service operationssThe planning ...

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... strong focus on the market andscustomer needs. While pricing remains a powerful tool insmaintaining competitive edge, package delivery servicessrequires other qualitative factors to achieve the edge =-=[1]-=-[9].sDue to the market potential of the package deliverysservice, proper performance measurement is needed in ordersto improve the overall service level. Many postal companiessaround the world have be...

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... good bibliographic survey on medical staff rostering problems has appeared [13]. Several studiesshave utilized mathematical programming techniques to assist in finding efficient staff schedules [6], =-=[9]-=-, [12].sCallahan [11] and Hariharan et al [20] have highlighted the effects of problem-based scheduling on patientswaiting and staff utilization of time in hospital clinics. Numerous previous studies ...

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...r-driven. In the global environment, price is obvious not the only determinant of the postal industry (Gouvêa et al., 2001). Qualitative factors, however, have also been included in several studies (=-=Bard et al., 2003-=-). Taking Hong Kong as an example, The Hongkong Post is the first postal service provider in Hong Kong since 1841. During the past decade, the growth rate of annual postal volume has been dramatically...