A computer assisted scheduling system for retail organizations

Abstract A knowledge-based system is developed to produce work schedules for personnel in large retail settings. The system considers part- and full-time employment, specific and general assignments, minimum and maximum hours per work period and per week, absences due to vacation and illness, and other constraints. The major objective is to schedule employees in relation to sales activity over the year without exceeding a certain budgetary allocation for sales labor. This allocation is defined as a percentage of sales. The system is developed in Arity/Prolog and includes a forecasting module which forecasts sales by week on the basis of the previous three years of data and activity by hour and day on the basis of several weeks of aggregated data. Schedules are produced for periods of one week but the user may override the schedule as circumstances warrant.