Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study

In the context of workforce scheduling, there are many scenarios in which personnel must carry out tasks at different locations hence requiring some form of transportation. Examples of these type of scenarios include nurses visiting patients at home, technicians carrying out repairs at customers...

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Main Authors: Castillo-Salazar, J. Arturo, Landa-Silva, Dario, Qu, Rong
Format: Article
Published: Springer 2016
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Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36529/
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author Castillo-Salazar, J. Arturo
Landa-Silva, Dario
Qu, Rong
author_facet Castillo-Salazar, J. Arturo
Landa-Silva, Dario
Qu, Rong
author_sort Castillo-Salazar, J. Arturo
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description In the context of workforce scheduling, there are many scenarios in which personnel must carry out tasks at different locations hence requiring some form of transportation. Examples of these type of scenarios include nurses visiting patients at home, technicians carrying out repairs at customers' locations and security guards performing rounds at different premises, etc. We refer to these scenarios as workforce scheduling and routing problems (WSRP) as they usually involve the scheduling of personnel combined with some form of routing in order to ensure that employees arrive on time at the locations where tasks need to be performed. The first part of this paper presents a survey which attempts to identify the common features of WSRP scenarios and the solution methods applied when tackling these problems. The second part of the paper presents a study on the computational difficulty of solving these type of problems. For this, five data sets are gathered from the literature and some adaptations are made in order to incorporate the key features that our survey identifies as commonly arising in WSRP scenarios. The computational study provides an insight into the structure of the adapted test instances, an insight into the effect that problem features have when solving the instances using mathematical programming, and some benchmark computation times using the Gurobi solver running on a standard personal computer.
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spelling nottingham-365292020-05-04T20:03:05Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36529/ Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study Castillo-Salazar, J. Arturo Landa-Silva, Dario Qu, Rong In the context of workforce scheduling, there are many scenarios in which personnel must carry out tasks at different locations hence requiring some form of transportation. Examples of these type of scenarios include nurses visiting patients at home, technicians carrying out repairs at customers' locations and security guards performing rounds at different premises, etc. We refer to these scenarios as workforce scheduling and routing problems (WSRP) as they usually involve the scheduling of personnel combined with some form of routing in order to ensure that employees arrive on time at the locations where tasks need to be performed. The first part of this paper presents a survey which attempts to identify the common features of WSRP scenarios and the solution methods applied when tackling these problems. The second part of the paper presents a study on the computational difficulty of solving these type of problems. For this, five data sets are gathered from the literature and some adaptations are made in order to incorporate the key features that our survey identifies as commonly arising in WSRP scenarios. The computational study provides an insight into the structure of the adapted test instances, an insight into the effect that problem features have when solving the instances using mathematical programming, and some benchmark computation times using the Gurobi solver running on a standard personal computer. Springer 2016-04 Article PeerReviewed Castillo-Salazar, J. Arturo, Landa-Silva, Dario and Qu, Rong (2016) Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study. Annals of Operations Research, 239 (1). pp. 39-67. ISSN 1572-9338 workforce scheduling employee rostering routing problems mobile workforce mathematical programming benchmark instances http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10479-014-1687-2 doi:10.1007/s10479-014-1687-2 doi:10.1007/s10479-014-1687-2
spellingShingle workforce scheduling
employee rostering
routing problems
mobile workforce
mathematical programming
benchmark instances
Castillo-Salazar, J. Arturo
Landa-Silva, Dario
Qu, Rong
Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study
title Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study
title_full Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study
title_fullStr Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study
title_full_unstemmed Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study
title_short Workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study
title_sort workforce scheduling and routing problems: literature survey and computational study
topic workforce scheduling
employee rostering
routing problems
mobile workforce
mathematical programming
benchmark instances
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36529/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36529/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36529/