Equivalent Alternate Solutions for the Tour Scheduling Problem*

Easton, Fred F.; Rossin, Donald F.

doi:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1991.tb01903.x

Cited by 34 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Research exploring the scheduling decisions is a widely studied area in the overall workforce management literature. In general, most scheduling research can be classified into three areas: shift scheduling (Buffa, Cosgrove, & Luce, 1976; Henderson & Berry, 1976; Thompson, 1990; Thompson, 1995a; Mason et al, 1998), days‐off scheduling (Tibrewala, Philippe, & Browne, 1972; Baker, 1974; Bechtold, 1981), and tour scheduling (Mabert & Watts, 1982; Bechtold & Showalter, 1987; Easton & Rossin, 1991a, 1991b; Jarrah, Bard, & deSilva, 1994). A smaller amount of research can be classified as tour assignment (Ritzman, Krajewski, & Showalter, 1976; Love & Hoey, 1990; Loucks & Jacobs, 1991).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reexamining the Nurse Scheduling Problem: Staffing Ratios and Nursing Shortages*

Wright¹,

Bretthauer²,

Côté³

2006

Decision Sciences

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Legislators at the state and national levels are addressing renewed concerns over the adequacy of hospital nurse staffing to provide quality care and ensure patient safety. At the same time, the well-known nursing shortage remains an ongoing problem. To address these issues, we reexamine the nurse scheduling problem and consider how recent health care legislation impacts nursing workforce management decisions. Specifically, we develop a scheduling model and perform computational experiments to evaluate how mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios and other policies impact schedule cost and schedule desirability (from the nurses' perspective). Our primary findings include the following: (i) nurse wage costs can be highly nonlinear with respect to changes in mandatory nurseto-patient ratios of the type being considered by legislators; (ii) the number of undesirable shifts can be substantially reduced without incurring additional wage cost; (iii) more desirable scheduling policies, such as assigning fewer weekends to each nurse, have only a small impact on wage cost; and (iv) complex policy statements involving both singleperiod and multiperiod service levels can sometimes be relaxed while still obtaining good schedules that satisfy the nurse-to-patient ratio requirements. The findings in this article suggest that new directions for future nurse scheduling models, as it is likely 39 40Reexamining the Nurse Scheduling Problem that nurse-to-patient ratios and nursing shortages will remain a challenge for health care organizations for some time.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reexamining the Nurse Scheduling Problem: Staffing Ratios and Nursing Shortages*

Wright¹,

Bretthauer²,

Côté³

2006

Decision Sciences

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“…For examples of recent research, see Morris and Showalter (1983), Easton and Rossin (1991), Bechtold et al (1991), Ryan (1992), Brusco andJohns (1995, 1996), Lau (1996), Narasimhan (1996), Langerman and Ehlers (1997), Caprara et al (1997), Beaumont (1997), Brusco (1998), Alfares (1998), Higgins (1998), Teodorović and Lučić (1998), Aykin (2000), Yan and Tu (2002), Yan et al (2004Yan et al ( , 2006aYan et al ( , 2006bYan et al ( , 2008aYan et al ( , 2008b. Of these, Yan et al (2008b) developed several deterministic models for mass rapid transit carriage maintenance manpower supply plans, which is more closely related to our research.…”

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confidence: 96%

Short-term manpower planning for MRT carriage maintenance under mixed deterministic and stochastic demands

2010

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The purpose of this research is to develop two manpower supply planning models and a solution algorithm for mass rapid transit carriage maintenance under mixed deterministic and stochastic demands. These models are formulated as mixed integer programs that are characterized as NP-hard. We employ problem decomposition techniques, coupled with the CPLEX mathematical programming solver, to develop an algorithm that is capable of efficiently solving the problems. The models and the method used currently in actual operations are evaluated by a simulation-based evaluation method. Finally, we perform a case study using real operating data from a Taiwan MRT maintenance facility. The preliminary results are good, showing that the models could be useful for planning carriage maintenance manpower supply.

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“…Warner and Prawda (1972) cited several hospital staffing studies to support the quadratic shortage penalty (Connor, 1960;Stafford and Schlotfeldt, 1960;Feyerherm and Kirk, 1964). Quadratic, or variance-type, criteria for equitable distribution of employee surpluses have also been described in the literature (Bechtold, 1981;Easton and Rossin, 1991).…”

Section: Variations Of the Objective Function For The Nwapmentioning

confidence: 98%

An exact algorithm for a workforce allocation problem with application to an analysis of cross-training policies

Brusco

2008

IIE Transactions

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The evaluation of workforce staffing and scheduling policies is of paramount importance for meeting the challenge of simultaneously providing good customer service and low operational costs. Policy studies are particularly critical in workforce environments plagued by staffing shortages. The cross-utilization of employees among different departments or work centers is a well-recognized staffing policy for coping with shortages. We revisit a non-linear assignment problem for allocating cross-trained workers so as to maximize overall utility, which is measured using a quadratic function of labor shortages. We develop a branch-and-bound algorithm that efficiently provides optimal solutions for problems of practical size. This algorithm is then used to conduct a computational investigation of cross-training policies. Among the most critical factors affecting utility improvement are the coefficient of variation for demand, worker absenteeism, the percentage of cross-trained workers and cross-training breadth. Several important interactions among these and other factors are also identified.

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Equivalent Alternate Solutions for the Tour Scheduling Problem*

Cited by 34 publications

References 33 publications

Reexamining the Nurse Scheduling Problem: Staffing Ratios and Nursing Shortages*

Reexamining the Nurse Scheduling Problem: Staffing Ratios and Nursing Shortages*

Short-term manpower planning for MRT carriage maintenance under mixed deterministic and stochastic demands

An exact algorithm for a workforce allocation problem with application to an analysis of cross-training policies

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