Competency and preference based personnel scheduling in large assembly lines

Abstract

This paper introduces a formal description and mathematical modelling of the personnel scheduling problem in the context of a paced multi-product assembly centre. The model explicitly takes into consideration the individual competencies; mobility and preferences of each worker, as well as the personnel and competency requirements associated with each assembly activity given both the current master assembly schedule and the line balancing for each product. The paper then validates and analyses the performance of the model through the optimal resolution of a small yet representative case using a commercial solver. For simplicity, we focus on the deterministic case; however the stochastic case will be discussed in the future research.

Keywords:

• Personnel shift scheduling
• Cross-trained workers
• Mathematical programming
• Optimization
• Flexible assembly lines

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Canada Research Chair in Enterprise Engineering and the NSERC/Bell/Cisco Business Design Research Chair for their financial support of this research.