Authors:
Nícolas P. Campana
1
;
Giorgio Zucchi
2
;
3
;
Manuel Iori
4
;
Carlo Alberto Magni
5
and
Anand Subramanian
6
Affiliations:
1
Departamento de Ciência da Computação, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Av. Central, Campus Universitário, 37200-000, Lavras (MG), Brazil
;
2
FMB, Marco Biagi Foundation, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Largo Marco Biagi 10, 41121 Modena, Italy
;
3
R&D Department, Coopservice S.coop.p.a, Via Rochdale 5, 42122 Reggio Emilia, Italy
;
4
DISMI, Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, 42122 Reggio Emilia, Italy
;
5
Department of Economics “Marco Biagi”, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, 41121 Modena, Italy
;
6
Departamento de Sistemas de Computação, Centro de Informática, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Rua dos Escoteiros, Mangabeira, 58055-000, João Pessoa-PB, Brazil
Keyword(s):
Personnel Scheduling, Distributed Services, Mathematical Model, Metaheuristic.
Abstract:
This paper addresses a real-life task and personnel scheduling problem arising in a large Italian company that needs to provide cleaning services inside a hospital. In this case study, the challenge is to determine a schedule of the employees to clean the whole hospital aiming to minimize the total labor cost, taking into account the fact that the building is a complex structure with multiple levels and each room has different peculiarity. To solve the problem, we propose a three-step approach using mathematical models and metaheuristic algorithms. The solution obtained indicates that the schedule attained by our method is better than the one generated by the company. In addition, to test and validate our approach more thoroughly, a set of artificial instances have been created. The results indicate that our method can help organizations to quickly generate and test a large variety of solutions. Our findings can be of general interest for other personnel scheduling problems involving
distributed services.
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