A hybrid tabu search algorithm for the nurse rostering problem

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of nurse rostering in Belgian hospitals. This is a highly constrained real world problem that was (until the results of this research were applied) tackled manually. The problem basically concerns the assignment of duties to a set of people with different qualifications, work regulations and preferences. Constraint programming and linear programming techniques can produce feasible solutions for this problem. However, the reality in Belgian hospitals forced us to use heuristics to deal with the over constrained schedules. An important reason for this decision is the calculation time, which the users prefer to reduce. The algorithms presented in this paper are a commercial nurse rostering product developed for the Belgian hospital market, entitled Plane.