Human resource scheduling model and algorithm with timewindows and multi-skill constraints

Abstract

In situations where an organization has limited human resources and a lack of multi-skilled employees, organizations pay more and more attention to cost control and personnel arrangements. Based on the consideration of the service personnel scheduling as well as the routing arrangement, service personnel of different skills were divided into different types according to their multiple skills. A mathematical programming model was developed to reduce the actual cost of organization. Then, a hybrid meta heuristic that combines a tabu search algorithm with a simulated annealing was designed to solve the problem. This meta heuristic employs several neighborhood search operators and integrates the advantages of both the tabu search algorithm and the simulated annealing algorithm. Finally, the stability and validity of the algorithm were validated by the tests of several kinds of examples.