Article ID: | iaor1997108 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 23 |
Issue: | 8 |
Start Page Number: | 819 |
End Page Number: | 828 |
Publication Date: | Aug 1996 |
Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
Authors: | Franz Lori S., Miller Janis L. |
Keywords: | programming: assignment, heuristics |
Multi-period assignment problems seek to allocate employees to tasks as required across multiple time periods. This type of problem is a subset of three-dimensional assignment problems and is NP-complete. A binary-rounding heuristic, which allows the determination of a feasible zero-one solution from a feasible continuous solution was developed and applied to 72 test problems. The heuristic found the optimal solution to 68 of the 72 problems and was within 95% of the continuous optimum in the other four cases. The CPU time and iterations required were significantly reduced over those required by a pure integer solution process.