A DSS for Competency-Based Workforce Scheduling for Multi-production Lines

Abstract

Today effective workforce scheduling is crucial for companies. This paper presents a workforce scheduling problem for multiple production lines. This study aims to develop an efficient and methodological shift scheduling algorithm for a heating device plant to reduce unnecessary overtime and improve quality and performance. The workers are assigned to the stations based on their qualification rates and a line balancing option is provided if required. After linearizing the non-linear objective function using an innovative approach the mathematical model is developed and solved by OPL CPLEX STUDIO IDE 12.10.0. With toy and original data. The mathematical model is verified and validated and the results provide the optimal assignment of the workers to maximize the quality of lines. Since the company cannot use CPLEX due to license restrictions the mathematical model is integrated into the Python program using the Pulp library to provide a solver option to the company. Moreover the Hungarian method is coded in Python to create an instant solution. Since the company prefers to assign the workers manually a greedy method is developed to improve the manual solution. Finally a user-friendly Decision Support System is designed to support the decision-making processes. © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.