Solving Nurse Scheduling Problem Using Constraint Programming (CP) Technique
Oluwaseun M. Alade
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria.
Akeem O. Amusat *
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria.
Oluyinka T. Adedeji
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Staff scheduling is a universal problem that can be encountered in many organizations, such as call centers, educational institution, industry, hospital, and any other public services. It is one of the most important aspects of workforce management strategy. Mostly, it is prone to errors or issues as there are many entities that should be addressed, such as the staff turnover, employee availability, time between rotations, unusual periods of activity, and even the last-minute shift changes. In this paper, constraint programming (CP) algorithm was developed to solve the nurse scheduling problem. The developed constraint programming algorithm was then implemented using python programming language. The developed CP algorithm was experimented with varying number of nurses. Experimental result confirmed that CP algorithm was able to solve nurse scheduling problem with promising results.
Keywords: Constraint satisfaction problem, constraint programming, nurse scheduling problem