Rostering from staffing levels: a branch-and-price approach

Egbert van der Veen, Bart Veltman

Abstract

Many rostering methods first create shifts from some given staffing levels, and after that create rosters from the set of created shifts. Although such a method has some nice properties, it also has some bad ones. In this paper we outline a method that creates rosters directly from staffing levels. We use a Branch-and-Price (B\&P) method to solve this rostering problem and compare it to an ILP formulation of the subclass of rostering problems studied in this paper. The two methods perform almost equally well. Branch-and-Price, though, turns out to be a far more flexible approach to solve rostering problems. It is not too hard to extend the Branch-and-Price model with extra rostering constraints. However, for ILP this is much harder, if not impossible. Next to this, the Branch-and-Price method is more open to improvements and hence, combined with the larger flexibility, we consider it better suited to create rosters directly from staffing levels in practice.
Original languageUndefined
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 35th International Conference on Operational Research Applied to Health Services (ORAHS)
Place of PublicationLeuven
PublisherUniversity of Leuven
Pages1-10
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9789081409902
StatePublished - Jul 2009

Publication series

Name
PublisherUniversity of Leuven

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Inductive logic programming (ILP)

Keywords

  • METIS-266499
  • Branch-and-Price
  • IR-69813
  • EWI-17328
  • Staffing levels
  • Employee preferences
  • Column generation
  • Personnel rostering

Cite this

van der Veen, E., & Veltman, B. (2009). Rostering from staffing levels: a branch-and-price approach. In Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Operational Research Applied to Health Services (ORAHS) (pp. 1-10). Leuven: University of Leuven.

van der Veen, Egbert; Veltman, Bart / Rostering from staffing levels: a branch-and-price approach.

Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Operational Research Applied to Health Services (ORAHS). Leuven : University of Leuven, 2009. p. 1-10.

Research output: Scientific - peer-review › Conference contribution

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van der Veen, E & Veltman, B 2009, Rostering from staffing levels: a branch-and-price approach. in Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Operational Research Applied to Health Services (ORAHS). University of Leuven, Leuven, pp. 1-10.

Rostering from staffing levels: a branch-and-price approach. / van der Veen, Egbert; Veltman, Bart.

Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Operational Research Applied to Health Services (ORAHS). Leuven : University of Leuven, 2009. p. 1-10.

Research output: Scientific - peer-review › Conference contribution

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van der Veen E, Veltman B. Rostering from staffing levels: a branch-and-price approach. In Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Operational Research Applied to Health Services (ORAHS). Leuven: University of Leuven. 2009. p. 1-10.

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