Article ID: | iaor20012396 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 51 |
Issue: | 7 |
Start Page Number: | 825 |
End Page Number: | 833 |
Publication Date: | Jul 2000 |
Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society |
Authors: | Dowsland K.A., Thompson J.M. |
Keywords: | scheduling, programming: integer |
This paper illustrates how a modern heuristic and two classical integer programming models have been combined to provide a solution to a nurse rostering problem at a major UK hospital. Neither a heuristic nor an exact approach based on a standard IP package was able to meet all the practical requirements. This was overcome by using a variant of tabu search as the core method, but applying knapsack and network flow models in pre- and post-processing phases. The result is a successful software tool that frees senior nursing staff from a time consuming administrative task.