Scheduling IT Staff at a Bank: A Mathematical Programming Approach

We address a real-world optimization problem: the scheduling of a Bank Information Technologies (IT) staff. This problem can be defined as the process of constructing optimized work schedules for staff. In a general sense, it requires the allocation of suitably qualified staff to specific shifts to meet the demands for services of an organization while observing workplace regulations and attempting to satisfy individual work preferences. A monthly shift schedule is prepared to determine the shift duties of each staff considering shift coverage requirements, seniority-based workload rules, and staff work preferences. Due to the large number of conflicting constraints, a multiobjective programming model has been proposed to automate the schedule generation process. The suggested mathematical model has been implemented using Lingo software. The results indicate that high quality solutions can be obtained within a few seconds compared to the manually prepared schedules.