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A large neighbourhood search approach to the  multi-activity shift scheduling problem

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Abstract

The challenge in shift scheduling lies in the construction of a set of work shifts, which are subject to specific regulations, in order to cover fluctuating staff demands. This problem becomes harder when multi-skill employees can perform many different activities during the same shift. In this paper, we show how formal languages (such as regular and context-free languages) can be enhanced and used to model the complex regulations of the shift construction problem. From these languages we can derive specialized graph structures that can be searched efficiently. The overall shift scheduling problem can then be solved using a Large Neighbourhood Search. These approaches are able to return near optimal solution on traditional single activity problems and they scale well on large instances containing up to 10 activities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Omega Optimisation, 4200 St-Laurent #407, Montréal, Qc, H2W 2R2, Canada

    Claude-Guy Quimper

  2. Mathématiques et Génie Industriel, École Polytechnique de Montréal, 2500 chemin de Polytechnique, Montréal, Canada

    Louis-Martin Rousseau

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  1. Claude-Guy Quimper
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  2. Louis-Martin Rousseau
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Correspondence to Louis-Martin Rousseau.

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Quimper, CG., Rousseau, LM. A large neighbourhood search approach to the  multi-activity shift scheduling problem. J Heuristics 16, 373–392 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-009-9106-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-009-9106-6

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