A two-stage stochastic program for scheduling and allocating cross-trained workers

Abstract

A two-stage stochastic program is developed for scheduling and allocating cross-trained workers in a multi-department service environment with random demands. The first stage corresponds to scheduling daysoff over a time horizon such as a week or month. The second stage is the recourse action that deals with allocating available workers at the beginning of a day to accommodate realized demands. After the general two-stage model is formulated, a special case is introduced for computational testing. The testing helps quantify the value of cross-training as a function of problem characteristics. Results show that cross-training can be more valuable than perfect information, especially when demand uncertainty is high.

Workforce planning incorporating skills: State of the art

“…Substitution and cross-training are easy ways to increase the flexibility of the workforce such that the company can cope with unexpected demand peaks without layoffs or hiring expensive new or temporary workers. Campbell [35] even concludes that flexibility resulting from cross-training can be more valuable than perfect information about the demand, especially when demand variability is high. Despite all advantages, substitution and cross-training requires a certain co-operation and goodwill of the employees which may come at a high cost.…”

Workforce flexibility in operations management

“…Aksin et al [57] reviewed the literature of cross-training for call center applications. Different from × × [58,59] × × × [60][61][62][63][64] × × [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78] × × × [79][80][81] × × × × [82] × × × [83][84][85][86][87][88] × × [89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107] other review papers dedicated to cross-train...…”

Management of Emergency Response Teams under Stochastic Demands

“…It models crosstrainings by specifying an agent's capability as a percentage of a fully qualified agent in that task. Campbell (2011) takes the problem of scheduling and assignment of cross-trained workers to a stochastic environment with variable demands. The second-stage is a recourse on realized demands.…”