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Firefighter Staffing Including Temporary Absences and Wastage

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  • Michael J. Fry

    (College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221)

  • Michael J. Magazine

    (College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221)

  • Uday S. Rao

    (College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221)

Abstract

We examine the problem of determining the annual staffing level that minimizes total expected costs for a fire department, subject to minimum service-level-based staffing requirements. We develop a quantitative model that allows for stochastic temporary absences, permanent wastage, and limited hiring opportunities, and takes into account the unique firefighter work schedule. Our model is reminiscent of traditional newsvendor-type inventory models, but where the uncertainty is dependent on the decision variable. We derive easily implementable optimal staffing policies for both the continuous and discrete cases. We provide numerical results comparing our optimal solution to several heuristic staffing policies commonly used in practice, which show that our optimal policy can provide significant savings. We perform sensitivity analysis to generate managerial insights. We discuss an application of our model and analysis to the Cincinnati Fire Department.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael J. Fry & Michael J. Magazine & Uday S. Rao, 2006. "Firefighter Staffing Including Temporary Absences and Wastage," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 54(2), pages 353-365, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:54:y:2006:i:2:p:353-365
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.1050.0241
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    1. Linda V. Green & Sergei Savin & Nicos Savva, 2013. "“Nursevendor Problem”: Personnel Staffing in the Presence of Endogenous Absenteeism," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(10), pages 2237-2256, October.
    2. Young-Chae Hong & Amy Cohn & Stephen Gorga & Edmond O’Brien & William Pozehl & Jennifer Zank, 2019. "Using Optimization Techniques and Multidisciplinary Collaboration to Solve a Challenging Real-World Residency Scheduling Problem," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 49(3), pages 201-212, May.
    3. N C Simpson & P G Hancock, 2009. "Fifty years of operational research and emergency response," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 126-139, May.
    4. Kayse Lee Maass & Boying Liu & Mark S. Daskin & Mary Duck & Zhehui Wang & Rama Mwenesi & Hannah Schapiro, 2017. "Incorporating nurse absenteeism into staffing with demand uncertainty," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 141-155, March.

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