Workforce Scheduling for Flamman Pub & Disco

Workforce scheduling is widely used within most industries. A well-outlined and efficient schedule gives cost savings, such as reduced number of overtime hours, increases overall utilization, and facilitates meeting demands. A large and complex schedule, for example, scheduling of a health care workforce, needs to consider many parameters when constructed; it is essential to account for all critical constraints regarding who can dispense a particular medicine, laws restricting the health care system, etcetera. This thesis evaluates two different methods for implementing a workforce scheduling system for one of Linköping’s most well-known restaurants and bars for students, using mixed integer programming and heuristics. Flamman Pub & Disco recruits new employees prior to every semester. Usually, the workforce consists of around 100 employees, and the vast majority of them work either in the bar or in the kitchen. Historically, the scheduling process has been handled manually using Excel. This does, however, take up much time for the operations manager, something considered frowned upon. Therefore, this thesis suggests an automated scheme for future scheduling processes. Because Flamman is a student organization, they do not hold the capital to invest in expensive licensed optimization software. However, literature studies have shown that heuristics such as large neighborhood search can generate sufficient performance, and therefore the investigation of free-of-charge software using a heuristic approach is conducted. The constructed framework uses a mixed integer programming model, which also lays the cornerstone for the two heuristics: a reverse constructive heuristic and a large neighborhood search. The results retrieved from the analysis prove that a heuristic can be a helpful tool for upcoming recruitment periods. There are, however, recommended areas for improvement regarding the current state of the heuristic.