Personnel Shift Scheduling Made Optimal

What is it about?

Coming out of an initially casual conversation with the HR Director of Avanti Blue Nile Hotel, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, the mathematical programming model (Integer Program) presented in this paper determines optimal weekly shift schedule for the Hotel’s engineering department staff satisfying several constraints including weekly rest requirements (e.g., No employee was expected to be on duty more than a maximum of 48 hours per week), rest requirements between shifts (e.g., each staff had to take 16 hours of rest before and after one duty shift), required number of personnel per shift, etc. A fair shift schedule and effective staff utilization are the results. Though the scale of this operation research (OR) modelling exercise is quite small, it still makes us optimistic about the value that Ethiopian organizations can derive if they try to introduce OR modelling in their planning and decision making processes.

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Why is it important?

It's easy to extend the model and apply for shift scheduling in hotels, hospitals, and other private and public institutions in Ethiopia. We particularly invite other Ethiopian hotels to consider using our model to save on unnecessary labor costs and to engage their frontline and back office staff with fairly desirable duty schedules. Given the little penetration of Operations Research and Business Analytics into planning and decision making in Ethiopian organizations, this small scale application is also important in promoting these practices in Ethiopia.