1,721,013 research outputs found
Applications of Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling in Service Operations Management
Full text linkService companies employ expensive personnel to provide services for their customers. Each service may involve a large number of individual activities that must be executed by the company's personnel. Furthermore, the customers often pay for the services provided once all these activities have been completed. Hence, in general, managers plan the service operations of their companies such that the time required to complete each service is minimized, i.e., the available personnel is utilized in the most efficient way. In this dissertation, we consider two complex planning problems that arise in service operations management: the short-term planning of assessment centers and the scheduling of projects with so-called work-content constraints. Both planning problems consist of a prescribed number of activities that must be executed by the available personnel such that the duration of the service, i.e., the duration of the assessment or the project, is minimized. We interpret these two planning problems as specific applications of the well-known resource-constrained project scheduling problem, and we devise novel solution approaches for the planning problems that are based on concepts and methods from the corresponding project-scheduling literature. For the short-term planning of assessment centers, we devise a multi-pass list-scheduling heuristic and five alternative mixed-integer linear programming formulations. For the scheduling of projects with work-content constraints, we develop a mixed-integer programming-based heuristic. Our computational results indicate that the proposed approaches obtain optimal or near-optimal solutions for the two respective planning problems in a short amount of computation time
A heuristic approach for scheduling assessment centers
No full textHuman resources managers often use assessment centers to evaluate candidates for a job position. During an assessment center, the candidates perform a series of exercises. The exercises require one or two assessors (e.g., managers or psychologists) that observe and evaluate the candidate. If an exercise is designed as a role-play, an actor is required as well which plays, e.g., an unhappy customer with whom the candidate has to deal with. Besides performing the exercises, the candidates have a lunch break within a prescribed time window. Each candidate should be observed by approximately half the number of the assessors. Moreover, an assessor cannot be assigned to a candidate if they personally know each other.
The planning problem consists of determining (1) resource-feasible start times of all exercises and lunch breaks and (2) a feasible assignment of assessors to candidates, such that the assessment center duration is minimized. We propose a list-scheduling heuristic that generates feasible schedules for such assessment centers. We develop novel procedures for devising an appropriate scheduling list and for incorporating the problem-specific constraints. Our computational results indicate that our approach is capable of devising optimal or near-optimal solutions to real-world instances within short CPU time
Efficient list-generation techniques for scheduling assessment centers
No full textHuman resources managers often conduct assessment centers to evaluate candidates for a job position. During an assessment center, the candidates perform a series of tasks. The tasks require one or two assessors (e.g., managers or psychologists) that observe and evaluate the candidates. If an exercise is designed as a role-play, an actor is required who plays, e.g., an unhappy customer with whom the candidate has to deal with. Besides performing the tasks, each candidate has a lunch break within a prescribed time window. Each candidate should be observed by approximately half the number of the assessors; however, an assessor may not observe a candidate if they personally know each other.
The planning problem consists of determining (1) resource-feasible start times of all tasks and lunch breaks and (2) a feasible assignment of assessors to candidates, such that the assessment center duration is minimized. We present a list-scheduling heuristic that generates feasible schedules for such assessment centers. We propose several novel techniques to generate the respective task lists. Our computational results indicate that our approach is capable of devising optimal or near-optimal schedules for real-world instances within short CPU time
Scheduling of assessment centers: an application of resource-constrained project scheduling
No full text
An MIP-based heuristic for scheduling projects with work-content constraints
No full textWe consider the project scheduling problem where each project activity has a prescribed work content that must be completed by a so-called work-content resource, and the activities' resource usage may be varied over time. In each period, the amount of resources allocated to an activity must lie within a prescribed range and cannot be changed for a minimum number of consecutive periods. The amount allocated determines an activity's requirements for further resources. The activities must be scheduled such that the project makespan is minimized. For this problem, we devise an MIP-based heuristic that schedules the activities sequentially. To determine more efficient resource allocations among multiple activities, subsets of activities are rescheduled periodically. Our computational results for a standard test set from the literature indicate that the proposed approach provides very good feasible solutions for small-sized instances, and that it outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for large-sized instances
- …
