Lightning-fast shift planning: Article by Prof. Tristan Becker published in INFORMS Journal on Computing

Together with Maximilian Schiffer (TU München) and Grith Walther (RWTH Aachen) Tristan Becker, assistant professor of Management Science since January 2022, succefully published the article "A General Branch-and-Cut Framework for Rotating Workforce Scheduling" in INFORMS Journal on Computing (JQ3: A).

Abstract:
In this paper, we propose a general algorithmic framework for rotating workforce
scheduling. We develop a graph representation that allows to model a schedule as a Eulerian cycle of stints,whichwe then use to derive a problemformulation that is compact toward the number of employees. We develop a general branch-and-cut framework that solves rotating workforce scheduling in its basic variant, as well as several additional problem variants that are relevant in practice. These variants comprise, among others, objectives for the maximization of free weekends and the minimization of employees. Our computational studies show that the developed framework constitutes a new state of the art for rotating workforce scheduling. For the first time, we solve all 6,000 instances of the status quo benchmark for rotating workforce scheduling to optimalitywith an average computational time of 0.07 seconds and a maximum computational time of 2.53 seconds. These results reduce average computational times bymore than 99% comparedwith existingmethods. Our algorithmic framework shows consistent computational performance,which is robust across all studied problemvariants.