A general multi-shift scheduling system.

Rotating work schedules are encountered in several industries and public sector organizations where work is carried out 24 h a day, 7 days a week. This article first provides a classification of the main constraint classes governing the design of rotating schedules. A novel constraint programming algorithm is then developed that can handle a wider variety of constraints than other algorithms from the literature. Computational results on several real-life examples confirm the efficiency and robustness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]