A genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees
Personnel scheduling problems involve multiple tasks, including assigning shifts to workers. The purpose is usually to satisfy objectives and constraints arising from management, labour unions and employee preferences. The shift assignment problem is usually highly constrained and difficult to solve...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Conference or Workshop Item |
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2018
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51518/ |
| _version_ | 1848798514833784832 |
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| author | Xue, Ning Landa-Silva, Dario Triguero, Isaac Figueredo, Grazziela P. |
| author_facet | Xue, Ning Landa-Silva, Dario Triguero, Isaac Figueredo, Grazziela P. |
| author_sort | Xue, Ning |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Personnel scheduling problems involve multiple tasks, including assigning shifts to workers. The purpose is usually to satisfy objectives and constraints arising from management, labour unions and employee preferences. The shift assignment problem is usually highly constrained and difficult to solve. The problem can be further complicated (i) if workers have mixed skills; (ii) if the start/end times of shifts are flexible; and (iii) if multiple criteria are considered when evaluating the quality of the assignment. This paper proposes a genetic algorithm using composite chromosome encoding to tackle the shift assignment problem that typically arises in retail stores, where most employees work part-time, have mixed-skills and require flexible shifts. Experiments on a number of problem instances extracted from a real-world retail store, show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in finding good-quality solutions. The computational results presented here also include a comparison with results obtained by formulating the problem as a mixed-integer linear programming model and then solving it with a commercial solver. Results show that the proposed genetic algorithm exhibits an effective and efficient performance in solving this difficult optimisation problem. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:20:59Z |
| format | Conference or Workshop Item |
| id | nottingham-51518 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:20:59Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-515182020-05-04T19:45:44Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51518/ A genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees Xue, Ning Landa-Silva, Dario Triguero, Isaac Figueredo, Grazziela P. Personnel scheduling problems involve multiple tasks, including assigning shifts to workers. The purpose is usually to satisfy objectives and constraints arising from management, labour unions and employee preferences. The shift assignment problem is usually highly constrained and difficult to solve. The problem can be further complicated (i) if workers have mixed skills; (ii) if the start/end times of shifts are flexible; and (iii) if multiple criteria are considered when evaluating the quality of the assignment. This paper proposes a genetic algorithm using composite chromosome encoding to tackle the shift assignment problem that typically arises in retail stores, where most employees work part-time, have mixed-skills and require flexible shifts. Experiments on a number of problem instances extracted from a real-world retail store, show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in finding good-quality solutions. The computational results presented here also include a comparison with results obtained by formulating the problem as a mixed-integer linear programming model and then solving it with a commercial solver. Results show that the proposed genetic algorithm exhibits an effective and efficient performance in solving this difficult optimisation problem. 2018-07-11 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Xue, Ning, Landa-Silva, Dario, Triguero, Isaac and Figueredo, Grazziela P. (2018) A genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees. In: 2018 IEEE Congress in Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC 2018), 8-13 July 2018, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Personnel scheduling; Shift assignment; Genetic algorithms; Multiple objectives; Multi-skills; Flexible shift length |
| spellingShingle | Personnel scheduling; Shift assignment; Genetic algorithms; Multiple objectives; Multi-skills; Flexible shift length Xue, Ning Landa-Silva, Dario Triguero, Isaac Figueredo, Grazziela P. A genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees |
| title | A genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees |
| title_full | A genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees |
| title_fullStr | A genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees |
| title_full_unstemmed | A genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees |
| title_short | A genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees |
| title_sort | genetic algorithm with composite chromosome for shift assignment of part-time employees |
| topic | Personnel scheduling; Shift assignment; Genetic algorithms; Multiple objectives; Multi-skills; Flexible shift length |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51518/ |