Workforce timetabling optimization

Description | Many companies have to deal with staff timetabling issues. Assigning laboring periods of time to individuals is a complex problem. Several constraints must be considered but essentially the goal is to find a suitable scheduling, such that the number of employees in service at each period is enough to meet the required laboring force. Among the constraints we have minimal and maximal laboring times and resting periods. If the company operates in a 24hours base the problem is even more complex since the beginning and end of the shifts must be decided and the sequence of shifts must meet health regulations.

A classic example of this problem is nurse rostering, but many other applications are easy to find like in TAP, EDP, Security enterprises, just to mention a few. 

The challenge of this group will be to find a formulation for this problem, understand the complexity and difficulty related to its solution and to attempt to solve it for a set of real data.

Coordinator | Paula Amaral, FCT/UNL.

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