Staffing and scheduling under nonstationary demand for service: A literature review

Abstract

Many service systems display nonstationary demand: the number of customers fluctuates over time according to a stochastic-though to some extent predictable-pattern. To safeguard the performance of such systems, adequate personnel capacity planning (i.e., determining appropriate staffing levels and/or shift schedules) is often crucial. This article provides a state-of-the-art literature review on staffing and scheduling approaches that account for nonstationary demand. Among references published during 1991-2013, it is possible to categorize relevant contributions according to system assumptions, performance evaluation characteristics, optimization approaches and real-life application contexts. Based on their findings, the authors develop recommendations for further research.

A decision support system and a mathematical model for strategic workforce planning in consultancies

“…Defraeye and Van Nieuwenhuyse (2016) provide a literature review on staffing and scheduling problems.…”

Performance Analysis of Time-Dependent Queueing Systems: Survey and Classification

“…Surveys on timedependent queueing models that are used for staffing decisions in service systems are provided by Green et al [89], Whitt [229], and Defraeye and Van Nieuwenhuyse [56,57]. Hampshire and Massey [96] integrate the performance analysis of time-dependent queueing systems in the optimization of multiple aspects of the communications industry.…”

Bloody fast blood collection

“…This will result in a two-step approach, in line with the terminology used in the extensive review on staff scheduling for service systems by Defraeye and Van Nieuwenhuyse [57].…”

“…The review by Defraeye and Van Nieuwenhuyse [57] focuses on staff scheduling for non-stationary systems. From a technical point of view, that is exactly what we are…”

“…None of the papers discussed in the review by Defraeye and Van Nieuwenhuyse [57] cover blood collection sites or blood banks in general, but eight papers discuss a health care setting. Of those papers, seven are applied to an emergency department [4,45,56,98,113,168,191] and one is applied to ambulance services [78].…”