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An Integrated Approach for Shift Scheduling and Rostering Problems with Break Times for Inbound Call Centers
- Source :
- Mathematical Problems in Engineering, Vol 2018 (2018)
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Hindawi Limited, 2018.
-
Abstract
- It may be very difficult to achieve the optimal shift schedule in call centers which have highly uncertain and peaked demand during short time periods. Overlapping shift systems are usually designed for such cases. This paper studies shift scheduling and rostering problems for inbound call centers where overlapping shift systems are used. An integer programming model that determines which shifts to be opened and how many operators to be assigned to these shifts is proposed for the shift scheduling problem. For the rostering problem both integer programming and constraint programming models are developed to determine assignments of operators to all shifts, weekly days-off, and meal and relief break times of the operators. The proposed models are tested on real data supplied by an outsource call center and optimal results are found in an acceptable computation time. An improvement of 15% in the objective function compared to the current situation is observed with the proposed model for the shift scheduling problem. The computational performances of the proposed integer and constraint programming models for the rostering problem are compared using real data observed at a call center and simulated test instances. In addition, benchmark instances are used to compare our Constraint Programming (CP) approach with the existing models. The results of the comprehensive computational study indicate that the constraint programming model runs more efficiently than the integer programming model for the rostering problem. The originality of this research can be attributed to two contributions: (a) a model for shift scheduling problem and two models for rostering problem are presented in detail and compared using real data and (b) the rostering problem is considered as a task-resource allocation and considerably shorter computation times are obtained by modeling this new problem via CP.
- Subjects :
- 0209 industrial biotechnology
Mathematical optimization
021103 operations research
Article Subject
Job shop scheduling
Computer science
business.industry
General Mathematics
Computation
lcsh:Mathematics
0211 other engineering and technologies
General Engineering
02 engineering and technology
Integrated approach
lcsh:QA1-939
Outsourcing
Scheduling (computing)
020901 industrial engineering & automation
lcsh:TA1-2040
Constraint programming
business
lcsh:Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Integer programming
Mathematics
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 15635147
- Volume :
- 2018
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Mathematical Problems in Engineering
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....c05a9fdf4d04b20c3f736327d6e04c25