Exact methods for extended rotating workforce scheduling problems

Abstract

In many professions daily demand for different shifts varies during the week. The rotating workforce scheduling problem deals with the creation of repeating schedules for such demand and is therefore of high practical relevance. This paper investigates solving this real-life problem with several new practically relevant features. This includes early recognition of certain infeasibility criteria, complex rest time constraints regarding weekly rest time, and optimization goals to deal with optimal assignments of free weekends. We introduce a state-of-the-art constraint model and evaluate it with different extensions. The evaluation shows that many real-life instances can be solved to optimality using a constraint solver. Our approach is under deployment in a state-of-the-art commercial solver for rotating workforce scheduling.