A Constraint Programming-Based Column Generation Approach for Operating Room Planning and Scheduling

The Operating Room Planning and Scheduling Problem combines the assignment of surgeries to operating rooms and their scheduling over a short-term planning horizon while respecting constraints such as maximum daily working hours of surgeons and due dates of surgeries. We formulate the problem within a constraint programming-based column generation framework. Computational results demonstrate that compared with a compact formulation the proposed algorithm is robust in finding good solutions.