Ergonomic workforce scheduling under complex worker limitation and task requirements:

Abstract

The ergonomic workforce scheduling problem (WPS) is addressed in this paper. Unlike its previous related works, theproblem considers realistic worker limitation and task requirements that include heterogeneous workforce with limited taskflexibility, varying worker team sizes, and pre-defined task operation schedules. Its main objective is to find a daily rotatingwork schedule solution using a minimum number of workers such that all workers’ ergonomics hazard exposures do notexceed a permissible limit. Initially, the ergonomic WPS is explained. Its mathematical model and approximation procedure toobtain the workforce schedule solution are described. From the results of the computation experiment, it can be concludedthat the approximation procedure is both efficient and effective in solving large-sized ergonomic workforce schedulingproblems.

Keywords

• workforce scheduling
• ergonomics
• hazard exposure reduction
• optimization
• approximation procedure