Integrated Personnel Scheduling in the Service Industry

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

The principal goal of this project is to develop an integrated decision support system that can be used by the service industry to better meet their long-term, mid-range, and day-to-day staffing needs. At each of these levels, the underlying problems will be modeled as large-scale integer programs and solved with a combination of exact methods and heuristics. A significant portion of the research is aimed at devising efficient solution algorithms. An associated objective is to develop new decomposition techniques and bounding schemes. Because many of the subproblems that arise at each of these levels have yet to be addressed by the research community, it is likely that additional modeling will be required to deal with qualitative issues, uncertainty, and the intricate nature of the constraints that inform practical applications. The methodologies developed will be implemented with an eye toward computational efficiency and robustness in the face of uncertainty. Expected results include: (1) the development of improved solution methods for personnel planning and scheduling in the service industry; (2) a greater understanding of modeling issues with respect to weekly tour generation and disruption management; (3) theoretical and practical characterizations of the performance of related algorithms; and (4) the design of an integrated decision support system. Effective personnel scheduling has become one of the primary means by which service enterprises remain competitive. Unlike manufacturing where standard shifts and days off are the rule, service organizations operate up to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and face widely varying demand. Poor staff schedules can lead to an oversupply of workers with too much idle time, or an undersupply with customer dissatisfaction and a resultant loss of business. Stated alternatively, an important goal of this project is to find robust schedules for a nonhomogeneous workforce. The general problem faced by management is to meet daily staffing requirements at minimum cost without violating labor agreements, company policies, and government regulations. At the long-term planning level, consideration must be given to issues that determine the size and composition of the permanent workforce. At the weekly level, critical resources must be tracked and schedules updated to meet changes in demand. Real-time control come into play at the day-to-day level where absenteeism, equipment failures, and other disruptions call for online rescheduling.