This paper presents a new methodology to solve the cyclic preference scheduling problem for hourly workers. The focus is on nurse rostering but is applicable to any organization in which the midterm scheduling decision must take into account a complex of legal, institutional, and preferential constraints. The objective is to strike a balance between satisfying individual preferences and minimiz...

This paper describes our experience with a simple modeling and programming approach for increasing the amount of constraint propagation in the constraint solving process. The idea, although similar to redundant constraints, is based on the concept of redundant modeling. We introduce the notions of CSP model and model redundancy, and show how mutually redundant models can be combined and connect...

Train crew management involves the development of a duty timetable for each of the drivers (crew) to cover a given train timetable in a rail transport organization. This duty timetable is spread over a certain period, known as the roster planning horizon. Train crew management may arise either from the planning stage, when the total number of crew and crew distributions are to be determined, or...

This paper studies the modeling and algorithms of crew roster problem with given cycle on highspeed railway lines. Two feasible compilation strategies for work out the crew rostering plan are discussed, and then an integrated compilation method is proposed in this paper to obtain a plan with relatively higher regularity in execution and lower crew members arranged. The process of plan making is...

Objective: To assess the effect of rostering with a patient enrolment model (PEM) in Ontario on emergency department utilization for non-emergent care. Data sources/study setting: Administrative data for fiscal years 2006/07 through 2010/11 from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care were used for the analysis. Study design: Patient-level analysis with a difference-in-difference mode...

We have designed and implemented a distributed model for planning and scheduling of transports in a railway company which is usable also for other production planning problems. Our model emphasizes the use of an agent for the coordination of distinct sub-problems occurring in railway scheduling such as for instance the allocation of track resources to transports, the allocation of vehicles to t...

We present a general modeling approach to crew rostering and its application to computerassisted generation of rotation-based rosters (or rotas) at the London Underground. Our goals were flexibility, speed, and optimality, and our approach is unique in that it achieves all three. Flexibility was important because requirements at the Underground are evolving and because specialized approaches in...

This paper presents a review of staff scheduling and rostering, an area that has become increasingly important as business becomes more service oriented and cost conscious in a global environment. Optimised staff schedules can provide enormous benefits, but require carefully implemented decision support systems if an organisation is to meet customer demands in a cost effective manner while sati...

The ATMOSTSEQCARD constraint is the conjunction of a cardinality constraint on a sequence of n variables and of n− q + 1 constraints ATMOST u on each subsequence of size q. This constraint is useful in car-sequencing and crew-rostering problems. In [18], two algorithms designed for the AMONGSEQ constraint were adapted to this constraint with a O(2n) and O(n) worst case time complexity, respecti...

The aircraft ground service company is responsible for carrying out the regular tasks to aircraft maintenace between their arrival at and departure from the airport. This paper presents the application of a hybrid approach based upon greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) for rostering technical staff such that they are assigned predefined shift patterns. The rostering of staff is ...