ABSTRACT
A framework composed by simulation modeling and data envelope analysis (DEA) is proposed to evaluate the overall service quality of various schedules and rosters that satisfy a time-varying demand. Workforce scheduling is a process of generating employee shifts to match customer demands for service while keeping costs under control and satisfying all applicable regulations (e.g., shift lengths and spacing of breaks). Workforce rostering is to assign shifts to employees preferably with the consideration of employees’ satisfaction to their working time. The proposed approach provides an effective and innovative tool to estimate the performance of schedules and rosters through multiple objectives that management has concerns with, other than merely service level. A cone-ratio DEA model is used to differentiate various schedules or rosters according to a decision maker’s preferences to their performance indicators produced by a simulation model.
