Work-Force Scheduling with Cyclic Requirements and Constraints on Days Off, Weekends Off, and Work Stretch

Abstract

A generalization of cyclical work-force scheduling is presented. We compute the minimal number of workers needed for a seven-days-a-week operation to satisfy cyclic demand for D workers every weekday and E workers every weekend day, while giving each worker two days off per week, including A out of B weekends off, for any A and B (A < B). Using this workforce, the generalized cyclical scheduling procedure produces a feasible “master rotation” schedule, which additionally maintains all work stretches between two and four days (unless a worker gets two successive weekends off, in which case he works Monday through Friday), and which gives adjacent weekdays off, as often as possible, to any worker who must work on successive weekends. It is shown that the latter condition can be satisfied for all workers in almost all instances.