A subproblem-centric model and approach to the nurse scheduling problem

Abstract.The number of hospitals in Japan exceeds 10,000, and every month nurses are scheduled to shifts in about 30,000 units in total. There is serious demand for automating this scheduling task. In this paper, we introduce a mathematical programming formulation of the nurse scheduling problem in Japan, and develop a meta-heuristic approach to solve the problem. This scheduling problem is a hard combinatorial problem due to tight constraints involving such factors as the skill level of a team, the need to balance workload among nurses, and the consideration of nurses' preferences, even though the number of the nurses to be scheduled is not large, at between 20 and 40. The performance of our approach is demonstrated by the successful solution of data taken from actual scheduling problems. The proposed model and approach can be adapted for the majority of hospitals in Japan, as well as for some hospitals in other countries, and is likely applicable to many other scheduling problems in the fields of business and logistics.

[1]  S. Morito,et al.  DENTAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT: THE ECONOMICS OF STAFFING AND SCHEDULING. , 1975 .

[2]  Joe. D. Megeath,et al.  Successful Hospital Personnel Scheduling , 1978 .

[3]  Hiroshi Imai,et al.  Classification of Various Neighborhood Operations for the Nurse Scheduling Problem , 2000, ISAAC.

[4]  Harvey H. Millar,et al.  Cyclic and non-cyclic scheduling of 12 h shift nurses by network programming , 1998 .

[5]  Toshihide Ibaraki,et al.  A tabu search approach to the constraint satisfaction problem as a general problem solver , 1998, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[6]  Atsuko Ikegami,et al.  AN EFFICIENT APPROACH TO NURSE SCHEDULING : IMPLEMENTATION FOR A 2-SHIFT CASE , 1998 .

[7]  Brigitte Jaumard,et al.  A generalized linear programming model for nurse scheduling , 1996, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[8]  Atsuko Ikegami,et al.  IMPROVEMENT ON THE 2-SHIFT NURSE SCHEDULING ALGORITHM , 2000 .

[9]  Sabah U. Randhawa,et al.  A heuristic-based computerized nurse scheduling system , 1993, Comput. Oper. Res..

[10]  Umesh Saxena,et al.  Scheduling Nurses Using Goal-Programming Techniques , 1984 .

[11]  W. C. Benton,et al.  Workforce staffing and scheduling: Hospital nursing specific models , 1992 .

[12]  Jeffrey L. Arthur,et al.  A Multiple Objective Nurse Scheduling Model , 1981 .

[13]  W. C. Benton,et al.  Performance measurement criteria in health care organizations: Review and future research directions , 1996 .

[14]  Kathryn A. Dowsland,et al.  Nurse scheduling with tabu search and strategic oscillation , 1998, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[15]  Peter C. Bell,et al.  A Visual Interactive Decision Support System For Workforce (Nurse) Scheduling , 1986 .

[16]  Michael M. Kostreva,et al.  Nurse scheduling on a microcomputer , 1991, Comput. Oper. Res..

[17]  D. Michael Warner,et al.  Scheduling Nursing Personnel According to Nursing Preference: A Mathematical Programming Approach , 1976, Oper. Res..

[18]  E. S. Rosenbloom,et al.  Cyclic nurse scheduling , 1987 .

[19]  Gustave J. Rath,et al.  Nurse Scheduling Using Mathematical Programming , 1976, Oper. Res..

[20]  Kathryn A. Dowsland,et al.  Solving a nurse scheduling problem with knapsacks, networks and tabu search , 2000, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[21]  James E. Bailey,et al.  Goal Programming Model Subsystem of a Flexible Nurse Scheduling Support System , 1988 .

[22]  Harald Meyer auf'm Hofe.  Nurse rostering as constraint satisfaction with fuzzy constraints and inferred control strategies , 1998, Constraint Programming and Large Scale Discrete Optimization.

[23]  V. Smith-Daniels,et al.  Capacity Management in Health Care Services: Review and Future Research Directions* , 1988 .