Dynamic workforce scheduler
AssigneeKronos Technology Systems Limited Partnership
InventorsMark E. Bucci, Joseph A. Velazquez, Paul J. Piccolomini
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of dynamically scheduling a workforce includes obtaining workforce requirements, attributes and employee preferences, determining a workforce schedule based on the workforce requirements and attributes, determining a schedule value based on workforce requirements and employee preferences, and iteratively modifying the workforce schedule, determining a schedule value based on workforce requirements and preferences for the modified workforce schedule, and comparing schedule values to determine a best workforce schedule.
Claims12
A method of dynamically scheduling a workforce, comprising:
- performing by a computer the steps of:
- a) determining workforce requirements for a given time period;
- b) determining, responsive to the workforce requirements, an initial workforce schedule for the given time period by determining shifts and assigning employees to the shifts, designating the initial workforce schedule as a trial workforce schedule and a best workforce schedule, and determining a value associated with the best workforce schedule responsive to the best workforce schedule, the workforce requirements and employee preferences, wherein said value is a weighted sum of overscheduling and underscheduling over all periods and all jobs for a given duration and employee dissatisfaction over all employees;
- and wherein employee dissatisfaction is a weighted sum of:
- a number of hours that the employee spends working outside the employee's preferred availability;
- a number of hours that the employee spends working outside the employee's preferred jobs;
- a number of hours that the employee spends working on the employee's preferred day off;
- and
- a difference between a number of scheduled hours and a number of preferred hours;
- c) modifying the trial workforce schedule;
- d) determining a value associated with the trial workforce schedule responsive to the trail workforce schedule, the workforce requirements and employee preferences;
- e) if the value associated with the trial workforce schedule indicates a better match to the workforce requirements than a value associated with the best workforce schedule, designating the trial workforce schedule as the best workforce schedule;
- f) repeating steps c) through e) for a predetermined number of iterations;
- and
- g) selecting the best workforce schedule.
A method of dynamically scheduling a workforce, comprising:
- performing by a computer the steps of:
- determining workforce requirements for a scheduling cycle;
- determining a workforce schedule satisfying a set of constraints such that an objective function ƒ responsive to the workforce requirements, the workforce schedule and employee preferences, is minimized over a set of candidate workforce schedules;
- said objective function is given by ƒ=WroΣΣoij+WruΣΣuij+WdΣwkdk
- where
- ΣΣoij=total number of minutes overscheduled for all periods i and all jobs j,
- Wro=weighting factor or penalty factor associated with overscheduling any job during any period,
- ΣΣuij=total number of minutes underscheduled for all periods i and all jobs j,
- Wru=weighting factor or penalty factor associated with underscheduling any job during any period,
- Σwkdk=sum of dissatisfactions of all employees k, each employee's dissatisfaction being weighted by wk, and
- Wd=overall weighting factor or penalty factor of total employee dissatisfaction, wherein employee dissatisfaction is responsive to employee preferences.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.