Title
A heuristic algorithm based on multi-assignment procedures for nurse scheduling.
Abstract
This paper tackles a Nurse Scheduling Problem which consists of generating work schedules for a set of nurses while considering their shift preferences and other requirements. The objective is to maximize the satisfaction of nurses’ preferences and minimize the violation of soft constraints. This paper presents a new deterministic heuristic algorithm, called MAPA (multi-assignment problem-based algorithm), which is based on successive resolutions of the assignment problem. The algorithm has two phases: a constructive phase and an improvement phase. The constructive phase builds a full schedule by solving successive assignment problems, one for each day in the planning period. The improvement phase uses a couple of procedures that re-solve assignment problems to produce a better schedule. Given the deterministic nature of this algorithm, the same schedule is obtained each time that the algorithm is applied to the same problem instance. The performance of MAPA is benchmarked against published results for almost 250,000 instances from the NSPLib dataset. In most cases, particularly on large instances of the problem, the results produced by MAPA are better when compared to best-known solutions from the literature. The experiments reported here also show that the MAPA algorithm finds more feasible solutions compared with other algorithms in the literature, which suggest that this proposed approach is effective and robust.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1007/s10479-013-1357-9
Annals OR
Keywords
Field
DocType
Nurse scheduling problem,Assignment problem,Heuristic algorithms,Combinatorial optimization
Weapon target assignment problem,Mathematical optimization,Computer science,Heuristic (computer science),Constructive,Generalized assignment problem,Nurse scheduling problem,Combinatorial optimization,Schedule,Assignment problem
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
218
1
0254-5330
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.47
14
Authors
6