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Article
Scheduling Workforce Relief Breaks In Advance Versus In Real-time
European Journal of Operational Research (2007)
  • Madeleine E. Pullman, Cornell University
  • Gary M. Thompson, Cornell University
Abstract
This paper focuses upon employee rest breaks, or reliefs, in workforce scheduling. Historically, the workforce scheduling literature has largely ignored reliefs, as less than 18% of the 64 papers we surveyed scheduled reliefs. The argument has been that one need not schedule reliefs in advance, since they can easily be scheduled in real-time. We find this argument to be flawed. We show that failing to schedule reliefs in advance will have one of two undesirable outcomes. First, there will be a less profitable deployment of labor should all reliefs actually be taken in real-time. Second, if some reliefs are never assigned or if relief-timing restrictions are relaxed so that more reliefs may be assigned in real-time, there will be a disgruntled and less productive workforce and perhaps violations of contractual obligations. Our findings are supported by anecdotal evidence drawn from commercial labor scheduling software.
Keywords
  • Manpower planning,
  • Rest periods -- Scheduling,
  • Work environment
Publication Date
August, 2007
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2007-2014 Elsevier B.V DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2006.05.018
Citation Information
Madeleine E. Pullman and Gary M. Thompson. "Scheduling Workforce Relief Breaks In Advance Versus In Real-time" European Journal of Operational Research Vol. 181 Iss. 1 (2007)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/madeleine_pullman/30/