Shift Scheduling and Employee Rostering: An Evolutionary Ruin & Stochastic Recreate Solution

Abstract

For decades, since the inception of the field, scheduling problems have been solved with a variety of techniques. Many proven algorithms to these problems exist; however, there is no single method to solve all the vast variety of problems that exist across many sub-fields with differing datasets. In this paper we explore the use of an Evolutionary Ruin & Stochastic Recreate algorithm, with a Simulated Annealing control mechanism, to a real-world employee scheduling problem and its ability to solve this problem to near optimality. The combinatorial possibilities of parameterisation are very large -the Taguchi design of experiments method is used to examine a subset of those possibilities within a limited runtime budget. Evolutionary Ruin and Stochastic Recreate has not previously been applied to the specific scheduling domain of employee scheduling and rostering: we investigate the effectiveness of the algorithm with different parameter values and discuss the insight it provides into the runtime effect of the mechanisms of Evolutionary Ruin & Stochastic Recreate.