Cyclical scheduling, where the time between production periods for each item is constant, offers simplicity and ease of control compared with noncyclical scheduling, where production periods are irregularly spaced. However, when demands are dynamic, flexibility in the spacing of production...

This paper illustrates a shift scheduling procedure for a commercial bank's encoder work force for check processing in the presence of daily work load uncertainty. The author presents a chance constraint model for determining the appropriate safety capacity, analogous to safety stock in...

Managers of construction projects, maintenance activities, auditing contracts, software shops, etc. are frequently faced with the task of establishing a new project's due date, which must compete with other projects already in progress or expected (forecasted) to start in the future. The study...

Work force scheduling research over the last few years has concentrated on the shift scheduling problem in service oriented firms (telephone operators, postal employees, bank encoders, etc.). In all cases, the authors were primarily interested in the evaluating procedures (optimal and heuristic)...

Models and understanding of line design depend on accurate assessments of the effects of design parameters on human actions. Although equity theory predicts that workers will react to the speed of people around them, experimental work has failed to find this effect in an industrial setting with...