The degree of dynamism for workforce scheduling problem with stochastic task duration

Real time dispatching strategies in a dynamic environment is a growing area of interest. Most of current work focuses mainly on two dynamic aspects of the problem, namely dynamic arrival of jobs and dynamic travel time. The degree of dynamism, for example is defined with respect to dynamic arrival of jobs. This paper focuses on another dynamic aspect, namely the duration of tasks. This aspect becomes important when tasks durations are relatively long and, in addition, one has to respect time windows. We characterize the degree of dynamism of such problems and show that it relates with the expected cost of a static scheduler which is reapplied in light of dynamic events. Furthermore, preliminary experiments indicate that the performance of the scheduler can be improved when the expected duration of a task is overestimated.