A matching algorithm with applications to bus operations

The problem of const.ructing shifts of work for busdrivers from given workblocks is shown to be a minimum cost matching problem. A branch and bound algorithm for this problem is derived which, while not having the guaranteed polynomial time complexity of the well known efficient labelling methods, is shown in extensive compu lational testing to be (1) extremely fast OIl the class of problem where the costs do not satisfy the triangle inequality, and (2) very easy to implement.