Automated Multi-Skill Shift Design for Hospitals

For labour intensive organizations, finding a good match between the predicted workload and the scheduled workforce work capacity is crucial: One important step in this matching process is shift design and it have received surprisingly little research attention even though good shift design is a prerequisite for an efficient roster. In this paper we present a prototype that automates multi-skill shift design for hospitals. The idea originates from discussions with two Norwegian hospital that also been involved in the development process with ideas, criticisms, and data provision. Our experiment shows very good results, in some cases optimal solutions are found within seconds or a few minutes.