The extended roster quality staffing problem: addressing rosterquality variation within a staffing planning period

Staffing and rostering are two interdependent optimization problems related to personnel planning. Where staffing concernsan organization’s personnel composition, personnel rostering aims to assign that staff to shifts while respecting a set ofconstraints. Staffing decisions therefore impact on the extent to which personnel rostering objectives can be accomplished.Previous research has suggested that it may prove beneficial to address both problems simultaneously and has introducedthe roster quality staffing (RQS) problem to this effect. The RQS aims to assess the appropriateness of a given personnelstructure based on the quality of its corresponding roster. The RQS problem is, however, limited by the fact that it onlyconsiders one rostering period and thus neglects that staffing and rostering span different time horizons. One staffing periodusually consists of multiple rostering periods, during which the rostering objectives and constraints may vary. This differencebetween rostering periods causes roster quality variation within the same staffing period. This paper remedies this issue byintroducing a generalization of the RQS problem: the Extended RQS problem. This generalization considers the impact of apersonnel structure upon possible roster quality over the entire staffing period. There currently exist no suitable algorithms forsolving the extended roster quality staffing problem, and therefore, two local search-based approaches have been developedand assessed by means of publicly available personnel rostering instances. Experimental results demonstrate both algorithms’optimization potential. In addition, the accuracy of the new model is assessed with respect to both staffing decisions andoverall roster quality.

Publication year:2020

BOF-keylabel:yes

IOF-keylabel:yes

BOF-publication weight:1

CSS-citation score:1

Authors from:Higher Education

Accessibility:Open