A simulated annealing approach to the solution of job rotation scheduling problems

This paper presents a new solution to the job rotation scheduling problem where the objective is to minimize the workload for each worker. Our motivation for this study comes from dangerous jobs that have some exposures. Job rotation is one method that is sometimes used to reduce exposure to strenuous jobs. Especially, this method can be applied to the service organizations that customer demand varies over the course of an operating day and across the days of an operating week. However, developing effective rotation schedules can be complex in even moderate sized service systems. Integer programming and a simulated annealing algorithm were used to construct the schedules. The efficiency of simulated annealing in solving combinatorial optimization problems is very well known. However, it has recently not been applied to job rotation scheduling problem based on the review of the available literature. In this research paper, the developed models are presented and results for test problems are reported.