 Representing employee requirements in labour tour schedulingGm Thompson Omega, 1993, vol. 21, issue 6, 657-671 Abstract: In this paper, we use the methodology of simulation to evaluate six approaches for handling employee requirements in an LP-based labour tour scheduling heuristic. We model employee requirements both as minimum acceptable staffing levels--where understaffing is unacceptable--and as target staffing levels--where both under- and overstaffing are acceptable. For each representation of employee requirements, we evaluate forms of the heuristic that use problem-specific and problem-independent information on the costs of employee surpluses and, if appropriate, employee shortages. Over an extensive test data set, the target-staffing approach using problem-specific cost information outperformed all other procedures. Specifically, it generated schedules costing less than 87% of those developed using the approach most commonly found in the literature. Its schedules were also almost 5% cheaper than those of its closest competitor. We discuss the managerial and research implications of the findings and provide suggestions for future research. Keywords: scheduling; manpower; planning; LP; simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jomega:v:21:y:1993:i:6:p:657-671 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Omega is currently edited by B. Lev More articles in Omega from Elsevier |
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