Data mining and simulation applied to a staff scheduling problem

Abstract

Staff scheduling is a complex problem encountered in almost all large businesses. Available manpower and skills must be deployed as effectively as possible, while being flexible enough to cope with the unexpected. This paper shows how high end PC technology in data-mining and simulation, as opposed to super-computing techniques, were applied to staff-scheduling in a large commercial organisation, where randomly fluctuating demand and a requirement for a simple, fixed schedule meant that optimisation techniques were not the most appropriate approach to the problem.