DR B R AMBEDKAR NATIONAL OF TECHNOLOGY JALANDHAR-144011, INDIA

DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND PRODUCTION ENGINEERING

IVTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PRODUCTION AND INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, CPIE-2016

WORKER SCHEDULING DURING LOW MANUFACTURER DAYS: A

CASE STUDY
Raman Kumar1, Harwinder Singh
1
Research Scholar, Department of Mechanical Engineering
I.K Gujral Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar, INDIA
2
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana, Punjab, INDIA

ABSTRACT
Effective utilization of resources is a propitious consideration for any organization. The
scheduling of staff is a common problem faced by all sectors viz. healthcare, manufacturing,
service and so forth all through the world. In this present work, an attempt has been made to
solve the scheduling problem of worker during low production days. The constraints of the
objective function of company treat on utmost priority while making the scheduling of
workers. Firstly, the scheduling problem is transformed into the linear programming problem
and later on the MATALB software inbuilt tool is used to meet objective of the study. A
contextual investigation issue of scheduling for 8 hour shift is discussed and the results
comprise the benefit for both worker as well as employee. The assumption made in this study
may consider as limitation of the present work.

Keyword: Scheduling, Linear Programming, Optimization

1. INTRODUCTION

The scheduling of worker is a challenging task as it consists of a variety of constraints. It

becomes more intricate and time consuming when it solves manually. The goal of scheduling
problems is to make decency in the workplaces for various workers. The modeling of
scheduling problem may vary as per the need of application. The shift scheduling problem is
analyzed with a specific end goal to decide the need for the worker in a shift per day. The
scheduling process has wide application in different sectors such as the airline crew shift
problem, banking, healthcare, service sector, manufacturing sector and so forth (Ernst et al,
2004). In general, the worker shift scheduling in manufacturing unit is not a troublesome
assignment, but it turns out to be much difficult during the manufacturers off days. The
ineffective scheduling of worker can be hindrance to do work in a team and has a significant
effect on worker output (Totterdell, 2005). Personnel scheduling problems consist of various
decisions such as task, group, sequence, shift, time and so on that must be taken.
Constraints are typically categorized into two gatherings: hard and soft constraints, differ
fundamentally as for individual inclinations, contingent upon individual establishments and
nations. Hard constraints are also known as Mandatory constraints and must be satisfied to
get achievable arrangements. Soft constraints are desirable and attempt to follow yet
connections take need, and therefore can be damaged.
Linear programming is a numerical system used to locate the best possible solution in
apportioning restricted assets to accomplish greatest benefit or less cost. More formally, LPP
is a method to achieve the optimal solution for a linear objective function, subject to linear
constraints. Despite the fact that the present day administration issues are perpetually

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 DR B R AMBEDKAR NATIONAL OF TECHNOLOGY JALANDHAR-144011, INDIA
DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND PRODUCTION ENGINEERING
IVTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PRODUCTION AND INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, CPIE-2016

changing, most organizations might want to augment benefits or minimize costs with
constrained assets (Kumar et al, 2014). This work is carried out to decide the minimal
number of workers to be utilized so that there will be an adequate number of laborers
accessible for every period. The organization of rest of paper is as follows. In Section 2, the
literature review is presented. Section 3 presents the need of study and problem definition.
The last section concludes the paper as well as recommendations for further research

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Tan et al (2009) purposed a novel scheduling model for better allocation of manual labor.
The work was carried out to reduce human cost, production duration and control production
overwork. The Genetic algorithm is used to find near-optimal solutions for a worker
scheduling problem. The result showed the optimal solution is beneficial for factory as it save
both cost and time. Gloyer and McMillan (1986) executed an integration technique which
consists of management science and artificial intelligence to take care of the general
employee scheduling problem. The purposed methodology has ability to incorporate the
weight to penalize requirement as well as desires which makes the result more reliable.
Kumar et al (2014) made an attempt to analyze shift sequence for the nurse scheduling
problem (NSP). The linear programming is used to maximize the fairness of the schedule
while respectively all the constraints. A numerical illustration example of nurse scheduling
for 8 hour shift is exhibited and the optimum solution is solved by Excel solver. The result
ensured the efficient utilization of the time and effort, to balance the workload to lead more
contented and effective.
Brucker et al (2010) applied an adaptive constructive method to tackle a nurse rostering
problem schedule while respectively three categorized constraints viz. sequence, schedule of
nurse and roster. A two stage methodology is used to solve nurse scheduling problem.
During first stage only sequence constraints were considered to build a quality sequences for
nurses while the second stage schedule and roster constraints were considered considering to
develop nurse schedules and rosters. Liogys (2011) made an attempt to analyze health care
workers rostering issue utilizing a movement arrangement based strategy. A case problem of
Lithuanias hospitals having 27 health care workers in 15 shifts having more than 20 soft
constraints with rostering time of one schedule month was illustrative. With a specific end
goal to accelerate program development process movements are gathered to four gatherings:
morning shifts, day shifts, night movements and duty shifts. There are just 64 feasible shift
sequences, for this situation. This procedure proceeds while continuing while schedule does
not meet workload prerequisite characterized in working contract or no further change can be
made. Jorne et al (2012) presented a structured literature review on Personnel scheduling.
Firstly, the order strategies in previous papers are thoroughly discussed and later on
presenting the scheduling problem into the technical features. The future scope in the field of
scheduling is presented and suggestions were provided in order to improve scheduling
process.

3. PRESENT WORK
3.1 Need of study

In this paper an attempt has been made to solve the problem of worker scheduling of a small
scale manufacturing organization in Northern region of India. The company is almost
overloaded during production peak time and satisfies with shift scheduling of workers. Be
that as it may, low manufacturer days, company wants to change shift timing for unwinding

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 DR B R AMBEDKAR NATIONAL OF TECHNOLOGY JALANDHAR-144011, INDIA
DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND PRODUCTION ENGINEERING
IVTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PRODUCTION AND INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, CPIE-2016

of workers. The company has recently purchased two automatic machines in the sheet metal
shop and desire to impart training to the workers on these machines on daily basis during low
manufacturer days. The objective of the company is to productively use assets and in this
manner to create programs with an adjusted workload and in addition to fulfill singular
inclinations however much as could reasonably be expected.

3.2 Problem Definition

The company has a total of 73 workers. During normal production days, workers do work for
at least 8 hours per shift and sometime have to do work for overtime depends upon the
workload. The workers can be deputed in any shift. The company has six shop viz. Welding
shop, Sheet metal, Machining, Painting, assembly, inspection, where the workers have to
perform tasks. Workers report on the company toward the start of each period and will be
available for 8 back to back hours. But during the low manufacturer days, the companys
desire that workers do work in shop for first 6 hours and rest of 2 hours should be utilized for
training purpose. The company wants to determine the minimal number of workers to be
employed so that there will be a sufficient number of workers available for every period. The
demands of workers during low manufacturer days are presented in Table 1.

Table. 1 Demand of workers per shift

Shift Clock time Minimum number of worker required in different shops
(24hours
day) Welding Sheet Machining Painting Assembly Inspection Total
shop metal
1 2 2 2 1 2 1 10
8:00 -11:00
2 3 4 4 3 3 3 20
11:00-14:00
3 4 4 4 3 4 3 22
14:00-17:00
4 4 3 4 2 3 2 18
17:00-20:00
5 2 2 3 2 3 3 15
20:00-23:00
6 2 2 2 1 1 1 9
23:00-2:00
7 3 2 2 1 2 2 12
2:00-5:00
8 2 2 2 2 1 1 10
5:00-8:00

3.3 FORMULATION OF PROBLEM IN LPP

Unique Assumption: All workers has ability to work in all shops viz. welding, sheet metal,
machining, painting, assembly, inspection

Formulate this as a linear programming problem by setting up appropriate constraints and

objective function.

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 DR B R AMBEDKAR NATIONAL OF TECHNOLOGY JALANDHAR-144011, INDIA
DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND PRODUCTION ENGINEERING
IVTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PRODUCTION AND INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, CPIE-2016

i) Identify and define the decision variable of the problem Let y1,y2,y3,y4,y5, y6, y7, and y8 be
the number of workers joining duty at the beginning of periods 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8
respectively.
ii) Define the objective function
= y1+y2+y3+y4+y5+ y6 + y7+ y8

iii) State the constraints to which the objective function should be optimized. The above
objective function is subjected to following constraints.

y1+y2 10
y2+y3 20
y3+y4 22
y4+y5 18
y5+ y6 15
y6+ y7 9
y7+ y8 12
y8+ y1 10
y1, y2, y3, y4, y5, y6, y7, y8, 0

3.4 PROBLEM SETUP AND RESULTS

The MATLAB software inbuilt function was used to solve above formulated LPP problems.

Solver: fmincon- constrained nor linear minimization

Algorithm: Active set
Derivatives: Approximated by solver
Max iterations: Use default 400
Max function evaluations: Use default*100 number of variables
Function tolerance: 1e-06

Outcome
1. The result showed that the minimum objective function value is 59.
2. The maximum worker and minimum workers are required during shift 2 and shift 8
respectively.
3. 14 workers are not require in production and can be engage in other activities (depend
upon management decision)

3.5 SCHEDULING OF WORKERS

The colour coding is used to show the scheduling details of worker for every shift. The figure
2 make easy to understand the scheduling of each worker and number of workers in each
shop per shift. The training schedule of workers is also presented in Table 2.

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 DR B R AMBEDKAR NATIONAL OF TECHNOLOGY JALANDHAR-144011, INDIA
DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND PRODUCTION ENGINEERING
IVTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PRODUCTION AND INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, CPIE-2016

Table 2. Shift scheduling of workers

Shift Timings
Worker 8:00-10:00 10:00-11:00 11:00-13:00 13:00-14:00 14:00-16:00 16:00-17:00 17:00-19:00 19:00-20:00 20:00-22:00 20:00-23:00 23:00-1:00 1:00-2:00 2:00-4:00 4:00-5:00 5:00-7:00 7:00-8:00
W1 Welding Training
W2 Welding Training
W3 Sheet Metal Training
W4 Machining Training
W5 Assembly Training
W6 Assembly Training
W7 Inseption Training
W8 Welding Training
W9 Sheet Metal Training
W10 Sheet Metal Training
W11 Sheet Metal Training
W12 Machining Training
W13 Machining Training
W14 Machining Training
W15 Painting Training
W16 Painting Training
W17 Painting Training
W18 Assembly Training
W19 Inseption Training
W20 Inseption Training
W21 Welding Training
W22 Welding Training
W23 Welding Training
W24 Sheet Metal Training
W25 Machining Training
W26 Assembly Training
W27 Assembly Training
W28 Assembly Training
W29 Inseption Training
W30 Welding Training
W31 Sheet Metal Training
W32 Sheet Metal Training
W33 Machining Training
W34 Machining Training
W35 Machining Training
W36 Painting Training
W37 Painting Training
W38 Inseption Training
W39 Welding Training
W40 Assembly Training
W41 Assembly Training
W42 Assembly Training
W43 Inseption Training
W44 Inseption Training
W45 Sheet Metal Training
W46 Machining Training
W47 Painting Training
W48 Inseption Training
W49 FREE SLOT Welding Training
W50 Training Welding
W51 Training Welding
W52 Training Sheet Metal
W53 Training Machining
W54 Training Assembly
W55 Training Assembly
W56 Training Inseption
W57 Sheet Metal Training Sheet Metal
W58 Machining Training Machining
W59 Painting Training Painting

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 DR B R AMBEDKAR NATIONAL OF TECHNOLOGY JALANDHAR-144011, INDIA
DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND PRODUCTION ENGINEERING
IVTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PRODUCTION AND INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, CPIE-2016

4. CONCLUSIONS

The present study demonstrates the overview of the planning and worker scheduling problem,
this seeks the minimum number of workers can handle the organization needs. An attempt
has been made to describe the constraint satisfaction system in terms of shift and worker
demands. The aim of this problem is to maximize the fairness of the schedule, while
respectively all the constraints. The result showed that the minimum objective function value
is 59 and the maximum worker and minimum workers are required during shift 2 and shift 8
respectively. The notable finding is that two workers (W47 and W 48) are engaged for 5
hours only and can be utilized for 3 hours as per the need of company. As a conclusion, we
believe that the achieved results are utilized the time and effort, to balance the workload to
lead more contented and effective. The use of MATLAB avoids healthy mathematical
calculations and the possibility of blunder in statistical calculation.

REFERENCES

Brucker P, Burke, E, Curtois T, Rong Qu (2010) "A Shift Sequence Based Approach for
Nurse Scheduling and a New Benchmark Dataset." Journal of Heuristics, 16(4), 559-
573.
Ernst AT, Jiang H, Krishnamoorthy M, Sier D (2004) "Staff scheduling and rostering: A
review of applications, methods and models." European Journal of Operational
Research, 153(1), 3-27.
Gloyer F, Mcmillan C (1986) "The general employee scheduling problem: an integration of
MS and AI." Computers & Operations Research 13(5), pp. 563-573.
Jorne, V den B, Jeroen B, Philippe De B, Erik D, Liesje De B (2012) "Personnel scheduling:
A literature review." Hub Research Papers 2012/43 , Economics & Management, 1-40.
Kumar BS, Nagalakshmi G, Kumaraguru S (2014) "A Shift Sequence for Nurse Scheduling
Using Linear Programming Problem." IOSR Journal of Nursing and Health Science.
3(6), 24-28.
Liogys M (2011) "Adaptation of Shift Sequence Based Method for High Number in Shifts
Rostering Problem for Health Care Workers." Social Techologies, 1(1), 151-162.
Tan S, Weng W, Fujimura S (2009) "Scheduling of Worker Allocation in the Manual Labor
Environment with Genetic Algorithm." Proceedings of the International
MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2009 Vol I IMECS 2009, March
18 - 20, 2009, Hong Kong.
Totterdell P (2005) " Work schedules. In J. Barling, EK Kelloway & MR Frone (Eds),
Handbook of work stress, 35-62, London: Sage Publications.