SCHEDULING WORKFORCE AND WORKFLOW IN A HIGH-VOLUME FACTORY

Citation
O. Berman et al., SCHEDULING WORKFORCE AND WORKFLOW IN A HIGH-VOLUME FACTORY, Management science, 43(2), 1997, pp. 158-172
Citations number
29
Categorie Soggetti
Management,"Operatione Research & Management Science","Operatione Research & Management Science
Journal title
ISSN journal
00251909
Volume
43
Issue
2
Year of publication
1997
Pages
158 - 172
Database
ISI
SICI code
0025-1909(1997)43:2<158:SWAWIA>2.0.ZU;2-K
Abstract
We define a high volume factory to be a connected network of workstati ons, at which assigned workers process work-in-progress that flows at high rates through the workstations. A high rate usually implies that each worker processes many pieces per hour, enough so that work can be described as a deterministic hourly flow rate rather than, say, a sto chastic number of discrete entities. Examples include mail processing and sorting, check processing, telephoned order processing, and inspec ting and packaging of certain foods. Exogenous work may enter the fact ory at any workstation according to any time-of-day profile. Work-in-p rogress flows through the factory in discrete time according to Markov ian routings. Workers, who in general are cross-trained, may work part time or full time shifts, may start work only at designated shift sta rting times, and may change job assignments at mid shift. In order to smooth the flow of work-in-progress through the service factory, work- in-progress may be temporarily inventoried (in buffers) at work statio ns. The objective is to schedule the workers (and correspondingly, the workflow) in a manner that minimizes labor costs subject to a variety of service-level, contractual and physical constraints. Motivated in part by analysis techniques of discrete time linear time-invariant (LT I) systems, an object-oriented linear programming (OOLP) model is deve loped. Using exogenous input work profiles typical of large U.S. mail processing facilities, illustrative computational results are included .