Application of Linear Programming in Optimizing Labour Scheduling

Abstract

Employee or labor scheduling is associated with assigning an appropriate number of workers to the jobs during each day of work. It requires determining when staff members will work and when part-time, full-time workers will be needed to work. It is obvious that the number of employees wanted on duty throughout the week may fluctuate depending on health or family issues of the labor and the employer’s requirement for a particular job; Scheduling forces us to systematically identify and analyze about all the tasks that need to be done on a project, the expected time each task might take, the expected requirement of the workforce for the job in terms of size and quality of employee personnel and the expected labor expenses. As the availabilities of the employees may vary and change from week to week; hence the scheduling becomes more essential for the smooth running of a project or shift. This paper focuses on a constructive method for solving Labor Scheduling problem encountered in a construction company, suggesting an estimated labor cost over a week and the requirement of part-time labors in each shift, using linear programming techniques, thus, providing a logical way to organize these tasks and produce a new schedule each week, by the virtue of the changing demand for service while minimizing labor cost and maximizing labor preferences.