Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Workforce Planning

Abstract

Every organization and factory optimize their production process with a help of workforce planing. The aim is minimization of the assignment costs of the workers, who will do the jobs. The problem is very complex and needs exponential number of calculations, therefore special algorithms are developed to be solved. The problem is to select employers and to assign them to the jobs to be performed. This problem has very strong constraints and it is difficult to find feasible solutions. The objective is to fulfil the requirements and to minimize the assignment cost. We propose a hybrid Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm to solve the workforce problem, which is a combination between ACO and an appropriate local search procedure.

New Local Search Procedure for Workforce Planning Problem

“…We apply it until the solution becomes feasible. It is the main difference with our previous work [8]. We observe that the infeasible solutions after first iteration have reduced a lot.…”

“…The proposed Hybrid ACO Algorithm is tested on 10 structured and 10 unstructured test problems. The achieved results are compared with hybrid ACO Algorithm from our previous work [8]. The ACO Algorithm from [8] applies local search procedure on infeasible solutions only ones, no matter whether the achieved solution is feasible or not.…”

“…The achieved results are compared with hybrid ACO Algorithm from our previous work [8]. The ACO Algorithm from [8] applies local search procedure on infeasible solutions only ones, no matter whether the achieved solution is feasible or not. In [8] we investigate the influence of the number of the removed workers from the solution, when the local search procedure is applied.…”

“…There we consider the workforce planning problem variant proposed in [1]. Current paper is the upgrade of [8]. There we proposed a variant of hybrid ACO Algorithm.…”

Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Workforce Planning: Influence of the Evaporation Parameter

“…Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm is proved to be very effective solving various complex optimization problems [7], [11]. In our previous work [8], [9] we propose ACO algorithm for workforce planning. We have considered the variant of the workforce planning problem proposed in [1].…”