IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jomega/v27y1999i1p115-127.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Efficient workforce scheduling for a serial processing environment: a case study at Minneapolis Star Tribune

Author

Listed:
  • Kumar, Sameer
  • Arora, Sant

Abstract

This paper reports work done at Star Tribune, a leading metropolitan daily newspaper in Minnesota to improve integration among pressroom, mailroom and distribution operations. This work is subsequent to that already reported in IIE Transactions, which was focused on improving press operations only during the live-runs. An improved size-forecasting model is offered which allows preparation of more precise work-force schedules sufficiently in advance. Several system variabilities have been reduced by identifying homogeneous subclasses, and designing tailored operations for each subclass individually, and eliminating over-design to absorb between-class variabilities. Installation of flow sensors on presses has eliminated unnecessary over-production, and also allowed a better co-ordination between the press and the distribution operations. Installation of status sensors in equipment has allowed for collection of more reliable statistics on equipment utilizations, downtimes and so forth. They also have improved many aspects of capacity and operational planning.

Suggested Citation

  • Kumar, Sameer & Arora, Sant, 1999. "Efficient workforce scheduling for a serial processing environment: a case study at Minneapolis Star Tribune," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 115-127, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:27:y:1999:i:1:p:115-127
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-0483(98)00033-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M. Segal, 1974. "The Operator-Scheduling Problem: A Network-Flow Approach," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(4), pages 808-823, August.
    2. Willie B. Henderson & William L. Berry, 1976. "Heuristic Methods for Telephone Operator Shift Scheduling: An Experimental Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(12), pages 1372-1380, August.
    3. Vincent A. Mabert & Charles A. Watts, 1982. "A Simulation Analysis of Tour-Shift Construction Procedures," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(5), pages 520-532, May.
    4. John J. Bartholdi, 1981. "A Guaranteed-Accuracy Round-off Algorithm for Cyclic Scheduling and Set Covering," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(3), pages 501-510, June.
    5. Kaye Basford & Geoffrey McLachlan, 1985. "The mixture method of clustering applied to three-way data," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 2(1), pages 109-125, December.
    6. Dodin, Bajis, 1987. "The use of demand information in selecting production plans and schedules," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 477-488.
    7. John J. Bartholdi, III & H. Donald Ratliff, 1978. "Unnetworks, with Applications to Idle Time Scheduling," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(8), pages 850-858, April.
    8. Ahmad I. Z. Jarrah & Jonathan F. Bard & Anura H. deSilva, 1994. "Equipment Selection and Machine Scheduling in General Mail Facilities," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(8), pages 1049-1068, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Villarreal Larrinaga, Oskar, 2016. "Is it desirable, necessary and possible to perform research using case studies?," Cuadernos de Gestión, Universidad del País Vasco - Instituto de Economía Aplicada a la Empresa (IEAE).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brusco, Michael J. & Johns, Tony R., 1996. "A sequential integer programming method for discontinuous labor tour scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 537-548, December.
    2. Brusco, Michael J. & Jacobs, Larry W., 1995. "Cost analysis of alternative formulations for personnel scheduling in continuously operating organizations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 249-261, October.
    3. Thompson, Gary M. & Pullman, Madeleine E., 2007. "Scheduling workforce relief breaks in advance versus in real-time," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 181(1), pages 139-155, August.
    4. Easton, Fred F. & Mansour, Nashat, 1999. "A distributed genetic algorithm for deterministic and stochastic labor scheduling problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 118(3), pages 505-523, November.
    5. Aykin, Turgut, 2000. "A comparative evaluation of modeling approaches to the labor shift scheduling problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 381-397, September.
    6. Dietz, Dennis C., 2011. "Practical scheduling for call center operations," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 550-557, October.
    7. Saravanan Kesavan & Susan J. Lambert & Joan C. Williams & Pradeep K. Pendem, 2022. "Doing Well by Doing Good: Improving Retail Store Performance with Responsible Scheduling Practices at the Gap, Inc," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(11), pages 7818-7836, November.
    8. Gary M. Thompson, 1997. "Labor staffing and scheduling models for controlling service levels," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(8), pages 719-740, December.
    9. Giovanni Felici & Claudio Gentile, 2004. "A Polyhedral Approach for the Staff Rostering Problem," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 381-393, March.
    10. Robbins, Thomas R. & Harrison, Terry P., 2010. "A stochastic programming model for scheduling call centers with global Service Level Agreements," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(3), pages 1608-1619, December.
    11. Michael J. Brusco & Larry W. Jacobs, 1998. "Personnel Tour Scheduling When Starting-Time Restrictions Are Present," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(4), pages 534-547, April.
    12. Elvin Coban & Aliza Heching & Alan Scheller‐Wolf, 2019. "Service Center Staffing with Cross‐Trained Agents and Heterogeneous Customers," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 28(4), pages 788-809, April.
    13. Ernst, A. T. & Jiang, H. & Krishnamoorthy, M. & Sier, D., 2004. "Staff scheduling and rostering: A review of applications, methods and models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(1), pages 3-27, February.
    14. Brusco, Michael J. & Jacobs, Larry W., 1998. "Eliminating redundant columns in continuous tour scheduling problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 111(3), pages 518-525, December.
    15. Noah Gans & Ger Koole & Avishai Mandelbaum, 2003. "Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 5(2), pages 79-141, September.
    16. Anuj Mehrotra & Kenneth E. Murphy & Michael A. Trick, 2000. "Optimal shift scheduling: A branch‐and‐price approach," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(3), pages 185-200, April.
    17. Marie-Claude Côté & Bernard Gendron & Louis-Martin Rousseau, 2011. "Grammar-Based Integer Programming Models for Multiactivity Shift Scheduling," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(1), pages 151-163, January.
    18. Chu, Sydney C.K., 2007. "Generating, scheduling and rostering of shift crew-duties: Applications at the Hong Kong International Airport," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 177(3), pages 1764-1778, March.
    19. Easton, F. F. & Rossin, D. F., 1997. "Overtime schedules for full-time service workers," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 285-299, June.
    20. Vermunt, Jeroen K., 2007. "A hierarchical mixture model for clustering three-way data sets," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 51(11), pages 5368-5376, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:27:y:1999:i:1:p:115-127. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/375/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.