Abstract
This research proposes a methodology for developing robust job rotation schedules to reduce the likelihood of low back injury due to lifting. We consider settings that have uncertain task demands and different worker profiles in order to simulate real settings. We begin by considering deterministic versions of the problem and solve these using mathematical programming. Because mathematical programming cannot be readily applied to stochastic versions of the problem, heuristic solution methods are developed. The effectiveness of these methods is demonstrated by comparing the results with provably optimal solutions from the deterministic problems and with an enumerative approach that is applied to the stochastic version of the problem. Across the test problems, the proposed heuristics are effective at finding good job rotation solutions. The proposed methods could also be applied to solve other job rotation objectives such as maximizing productivity and reducing exposure to other work environmental factors such as excessive noise.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ayoub, M. M., Bethea, N. J., Deivanayagam, S., Asfour, S. S., Bakken, G. M., Liles, D. H., Mital, A., & Sherif, M. (1978). Determination and modeling of lifting capacity. Technical report, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Grant No. 5RO1OH00945-02.
Ayoub, M. M., Mital, A., Bakken, G. M., Asfour, S. S., & Bethea, N. J. (1980). Development of strength and capacity norms for manual materials handling: the state of the art. Human Factors, 22, 271–283.
Burke, E. K., De Causmaecker, P., Vanden Berghe, G., & Van Landeghem, H. (2004). The state of the art of nurse rostering. Journal of Scheduling, 7, 441–499.
Carnahan, B., Norman, B. A., & Redfern, M. S. (2000). Designing safe job rotation schedules using optimization and heuristic search. Ergonomics, 43(4), 543–560.
Daniels, R. L., & Carrillo, J. E. (1997). β-robust scheduling for single-machine systems with uncertain processing times. IIE Transactions, 29, 977–985.
Daniels, R. L., & Kouvelis, P. (1995). Robust scheduling to hedge against processing time uncertainty in single-stage production. Management Science, 41(2), 363–376.
Degroot, M. H. (1989). Probability and statistics (2nd ed.). Reading: Addison-Wesley.
Hagberg, M., Silverstein, B., Wells, R., Smith, M. J., Hendrick, H. W., Carayon, P., & Pérusse, M. (1995). Work related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs): a reference book for prevention. London: Taylor&Francis.
Klabjan, D., Schaefer, A. J., Johnson, E. L., Kleywegt, A. J., & Nemhauser, G. L. (2001). Robust airline crew scheduling, In Proceedings of 4th triennial symposium on transportation analysis (TRISTAN IV) (pp. 275–280).
Kouvelis, P., & Yu, G. (1997). Robust discrete optimization and its applications. New York: Kluwer Academic.
Liles, D., & Deivanayagam, S. (1984). A job severity index for the evaluation and control of lifting injury. Human Factors, 26(6), 683–693.
Sevaux, M., & Le Quéré, Y. (2003). Solving a robust maintenance scheduling problem at the French railways company. Technical report, University of Valenciennes, March 2003. LAMIH/SP-2003-3.
Sevaus, M., & Sörensen, K. (2004). A genetic algorithm for robust schedules in a just-in-time environment with ready times and due dates. 4OR-Quaterly Journal of the Belgian, French and Italian Operations Research, 2(2), 129–147.
Shah, A. (1985). A simpler approximation for areas under the standard normal curve. The American Statistician, 39(1), 80.
Sörensen, K. (2001). Tabu searching for robust solutions. In Proceedings of the 4th metaheuristics international conference (pp. 707–712).
Sörensen, K. (2004). Finding robust solutions using local search. Journal of Mathematical Modelling and Algorithms, 3(1), 89–103.
Sörensen, K., & Sevaux, M. (2004). Robust and flexible vehicle routing in practical situations. In Proceedings of the 5th triennial symposium on transportation analysis (TRISTAN V), June 2004.
Tayyari, F., & Smith, J. L. (1997). Occupational ergonomics principles and applications. London: Chapman and Hall.
Tharmmaphornphilas, W. (2001). A robust job rotation schedule to minimize worker injuries. PhD thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Tsuchida, K., Oka, H., Ikkai, Y., & Komoda, N. (2004). A robust scheduling method for a job shop problem in production by using data carriers. In IEEE international conference on systems, man and cybernetics (pp. 1464–1468), October 2004.
Velagapudi, N. K. (1992). Robust scheduling for manufacturing systems. Computers and Industrial Engineering, 23(1–4), 133–136.
Yang, Y., & Casanova, H. (2003). RUMR: robust scheduling for divisible workloads. In Proceedings of the 12th IEEE symposium on high performance and distributed computing (HPDC-12), June 2003.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tharmmaphornphilas, W., Norman, B.A. A methodology to create robust job rotation schedules. Ann Oper Res 155, 339–360 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-007-0219-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-007-0219-8