Help with day job: Algorithmic staff scheduling solutions?

3 points by koolkao 15 years ago | 3 comments

At a gross level, the problem is simple: schedule an army of staff for one-person-per-day coverage, at any given day the staff is split into 3 pools, each staff has a vacation requirement, each staff has at most 2 shifts per week, etc.

I'd hate to do this manually as it has been done at my organization for centuries. I'd love to do something cool like genetic algorithms (eg http://www.sersc.org/journals/IJAST/vol14/1.pdf).

What has everyone here found useful? Open source / free alternatives are a big plus. This also sounds like an optimization problem, can I fire up C++, R, etc to plug into some optimization library for this?

pdebruic 15 years ago |

I'm making a service that does this. Its not public but works OK. I made it for a summer camp where the campers (~250) sign up for different stuff each day (Archery, Swimming, Sailing, + 30 others) so the demand for appropriately trained staff in each activity can fluctuate wildly on a day to day basis. The staff (~70) have days off but the campers don't, so the available talent pool also varies significantly. Let me know if you want to try it. I'm definitely going to charge for it when its publicly available.

bartonfink 15 years ago |

Isn't this essentially the stable-marriage problem matching staff to shifts where shifts have no preference who staffs them?

aaronblohowiak 15 years ago |

This is what prolog was made for. You might have good luck with googling "constraint-based programming"