IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/annopr/v155y2007i1p257-27710.1007-s10479-007-0217-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Towards a practical engineering tool for rostering

Author

Listed:
  • Edward Tsang
  • John Ford
  • Patrick Mills
  • Richard Bradwell
  • Richard Williams
  • Paul Scott

Abstract

The profitability and morale of many organizations (such as factories, hospitals and airlines) are affected by their ability to schedule their personnel properly. Sophisticated and powerful constraint solvers such as ILOG, CHIP, ECLiPSe, etc. have been demonstrated to be extremely effective on scheduling. Unfortunately, they require non-trivial expertise to use. This paper describes ZDC-rostering, a constraint-based tool for personnel scheduling that addresses the software crisis and fills a void in the space of solvers. ZDC-rostering is easier to use than the above constraint-based solvers and more effective than Microsoft’s Excel Solver. ZDC-rostering is based on an open-source computer-aided constraint programming package called ZDC, which decouples problem formulation (or modelling) from solution generation in constraint satisfaction. ZDC is equipped with a set of constraint algorithms, including Extended Guided Local Search, whose efficiency and effectiveness have been demonstrated in a wide range of applications. Our experiments show that ZDC-rostering is capable of solving realistic-sized and very tightly-constrained problems efficiently. ZDC-rostering demonstrates the feasibility of applying constraint satisfaction techniques to solving rostering problems, without having to acquire deep knowledge in constraint technology. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Suggested Citation

  • Edward Tsang & John Ford & Patrick Mills & Richard Bradwell & Richard Williams & Paul Scott, 2007. "Towards a practical engineering tool for rostering," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 155(1), pages 257-277, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:annopr:v:155:y:2007:i:1:p:257-277:10.1007/s10479-007-0217-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s10479-007-0217-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10479-007-0217-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10479-007-0217-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. A.T. Ernst & H. Jiang & M. Krishnamoorthy & B. Owens & D. Sier, 2004. "An Annotated Bibliography of Personnel Scheduling and Rostering," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 21-144, March.
    2. Burke, Edmund K. & McCollum, Barry & Meisels, Amnon & Petrovic, Sanja & Qu, Rong, 2007. "A graph-based hyper-heuristic for educational timetabling problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 176(1), pages 177-192, January.
    3. Patrick Mills & Edward Tsang & John Ford, 2003. "Applying an Extended Guided Local Search to the Quadratic Assignment Problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 118(1), pages 121-135, February.
    4. Cheang, B. & Li, H. & Lim, A. & Rodrigues, B., 2003. "Nurse rostering problems--a bibliographic survey," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 151(3), pages 447-460, December.
    5. 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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. 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.
    2. Lotfi Hidri & Achraf Gazdar & Mohammed M. Mabkhot, 2020. "Optimized Procedure to Schedule Physicians in an Intensive Care Unit: A Case Study," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-24, November.
    3. Broos Maenhout & Mario Vanhoucke, 2008. "Comparison and hybridization of crossover operators for the nurse scheduling problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 333-353, March.
    4. Melissa R. Bowers & Charles E. Noon & Wei Wu & J. Kirk Bass, 2016. "Neonatal Physician Scheduling at the University of Tennessee Medical Center," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 46(2), pages 168-182, April.
    5. Damcı-Kurt, Pelin & Zhang, Minjiao & Marentay, Brian & Govind, Nirmal, 2019. "Improving physician schedules by leveraging equalization: Cases from hospitals in U.S," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 182-193.
    6. Suk Ho Jin & Ho Yeong Yun & Suk Jae Jeong & Kyung Sup Kim, 2017. "Hybrid and Cooperative Strategies Using Harmony Search and Artificial Immune Systems for Solving the Nurse Rostering Problem," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(7), pages 1-19, June.
    7. Jens Brunner & Günther Edenharter, 2011. "Long term staff scheduling of physicians with different experience levels in hospitals using column generation," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 189-202, June.
    8. Mathirajan, M. & Ramanathan, R., 2007. "A (0-1) goal programming model for scheduling the tour of a marketing executive," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(2), pages 554-566, June.
    9. Dohn, Anders & Mason, Andrew, 2013. "Branch-and-price for staff rostering: An efficient implementation using generic programming and nested column generation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 230(1), pages 157-169.
    10. Federico Della Croce & Fabio Salassa, 2014. "A variable neighborhood search based matheuristic for nurse rostering problems," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 218(1), pages 185-199, July.
    11. Caballini, Claudia & Paolucci, Massimo, 2020. "A rostering approach to minimize health risks for workers: An application to a container terminal in the Italian port of Genoa," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    12. Valouxis, Christos & Gogos, Christos & Goulas, George & Alefragis, Panayiotis & Housos, Efthymios, 2012. "A systematic two phase approach for the nurse rostering problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 219(2), pages 425-433.
    13. David Rea & Craig Froehle & Suzanne Masterson & Brian Stettler & Gregory Fermann & Arthur Pancioli, 2021. "Unequal but Fair: Incorporating Distributive Justice in Operational Allocation Models," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(7), pages 2304-2320, July.
    14. Vanhoucke, Mario & Maenhout, Broos, 2009. "On the characterization and generation of nurse scheduling problem instances," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 196(2), pages 457-467, July.
    15. Elina Rönnberg & Torbjörn Larsson, 2010. "Automating the self-scheduling process of nurses in Swedish healthcare: a pilot study," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 35-53, March.
    16. Masoud Yaghini & Mohammad Karimi & Mohadeseh Rahbar, 2015. "A set covering approach for multi-depot train driver scheduling," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 636-654, April.
    17. Banu Sungur & Cemal Özgüven & Yasemin Kariper, 2017. "Shift scheduling with break windows, ideal break periods, and ideal waiting times," Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 203-222, June.
    18. Panta Lučić & Dušan Teodorović, 2007. "Metaheuristics approach to the aircrew rostering problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 155(1), pages 311-338, November.
    19. Erhard, Melanie & Schoenfelder, Jan & Fügener, Andreas & Brunner, Jens O., 2018. "State of the art in physician scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 265(1), pages 1-18.
    20. Paola Cappanera & Filippo Visintin & Roberta Rossi, 2022. "The emergency department physician rostering problem: obtaining equitable solutions via network optimization," Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, Springer, vol. 34(4), pages 916-959, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:spr:annopr:v:155:y:2007:i:1:p:257-277:10.1007/s10479-007-0217-x. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.