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  • Employee Shift Scheduling
  • Shift service constraints
  • Demand and supply

Employee Shift Scheduling

    • Introduction
    • Planning AI concepts
    • Metrics and optimization goals
    • Getting started with employee shift scheduling
    • Understanding the API
    • Employee shift scheduling user guide
    • Employee resource constraints
      • Employee availability
      • Employee contracts
      • Work limits
        • Work limits
        • Minutes worked per period
        • Minutes worked in a rolling window
        • Minutes logged per period
        • Days worked per period
        • Days worked in a rolling window
        • Consecutive days worked rules
        • Shifts worked per period
        • Shifts worked in a rolling window
      • Time off
        • Time off
        • Days off per period
        • Consecutive days off in a rolling window
        • Consecutive minutes off in a rolling window
        • Shifts to avoid close to day off requests
      • Shift type diversity
      • Shift rotation and patterns
      • Fairness
      • Pairing employees
      • Shift travel and locations
    • Shift service constraints
      • Alternative shifts
      • Cost management
      • Demand and supply
      • Mandatory and optional shifts
      • Shift assignments
      • Shift sequence patterns: single day shifts
      • Shift sequence patterns: multi-day shifts
      • Shift sequence patterns: daily shift pairings
      • Skills and risk factors
    • Recommendations
    • Real-time planning
    • Time zones and Daylight Saving Time (DST)
    • New and noteworthy
    • Upgrading to the latest versions
    • Feature requests

Demand and supply

This model supports multiple ways to define the work demand:

  • Shift slot scheduling (default): The goal is to assign every shift to an employee. There is no demand curve.

  • Hourly demand scheduling: The goal is to fulfill the hourly demand curve, by assigning a part of the input shifts to an employee. The other shifts will naturally remain unassigned.

  • A combination of both.

1. Shift slot scheduling

Input the work demand as shifts that require an employee. The solver assigns every shift to an employee.

shift slot scheduling

Overconstrained scheduling: If it is impossible to assign every shift to an employee without breaking hard constraints, due to a shortage of available employees, some shifts remain unassigned and the score breaks medium constraints.

2. Hourly demand scheduling

Input the work demand as number of required of employees per hour. The solver selects a subset of the shifts to assign to an employee to fulfill the demand curve.

hourly demand scheduling

Overconstrained scheduling: If it is impossible to meet the hourly demand without breaking hard constraints, due to a shortage of available employees, the hourly demand isn’t entirely met and the score breaks medium constraints.

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