Mathematical programming approach based on column generation for a class of staff scheduling problems

In the workplace, e.g. convenience stores, where the workers engage in the required works, it is indispensable to make such a work schedule that the workers should be appropriately assigned to the work every time period. In general, so far, the staff schedule is determined manually by considering the constraints which includes the original ones for each workplace. However, it is the case that the constrains are not be completely clear because some constraints are to be given on an empirical basis. In this study, first, the staff scheduling problems for seeking an effective and practical schedule are formally defined in a generalized form. Then, a new solution approach to generate some candidate patterns and then to allocate the patterns to workers for staff scheduling problems is described. Through some computational examples, the validity of the proposed approach is confirmed.