The art and science of designing rotating schedules

Rotating schedules are commonly used in a number of industries and public s ervices where employees work round the clock seven days a week. Several rul es govern the design of such schedules. While this problem can be formulate d as an integer linear program, this methodology is often too rigid. In thi s paper I argue that to obtain rotating schedules that are acceptable in pr actice, rules often have to be broken so that designing good schedules is m ore of an art than a science.