A decision support system for scheduling personnel in a newspaper publishing environment

The authors developed and implemented a PC-based decision support system for planning and scheduling part-time workers at a local newspaper company. The system addresses two important issues: generating requirements for part-time workers for each shift and scheduling them based on certain criteria. The authors used a rule-based system to generate the requirements and a heuristic search procedure incorporated into the system to develop schedules. The system has been in use for the past two years and has resulted in a 16-percent reduction in the number of part-time workers hired, which translates to an annual savings of $50,000. It has also reduced the time supervisors spend generating requirements and schedules for part-time workers.