In this paper we formulate and efficiently solve staff scheduling problems for large organizations that provide continuous services to customers. We describe an integer programming approach for a class of such problems, where solutions have to obey a number of constraints related to workload...

For a given planning horizon, workforce composition and set of labor requirements, personnel scheduling often reduces to solving three problems. The first is concerned with the assignment of days off; the second involves assigning workers to shifts during the day; and the third involves the...

ORTEC is a Netherlands-based software company selling decision support systems based on operations research models. One of her products is HARMONY, a workforce scheduling package. We developed a model to predict its return on investment for a specific customer. The model uses a database of...

Productivity at Australian container terminals has improved significantly in absolute terms since 1997 according to this international benchmarking study. For the sample of ship calls and terminals studied, productivity improved also in relative terms. The productivity improvement at Australian...

This study examines selected work arrangements and assesses their implications for the performance of container stevedoring workplaces. The effects on employees and users of stevedoring services are also considered, and impediments to achieving improved work arrangements are analysed. This is...

In spite of its tremendous economic significance, the problem of sales staff schedule optimization for retail stores has received relatively scant attention. Current approaches typically attempt to minimize payroll costs by closely fitting a staffing curve derived from exogenous sales forecasts,...