Quality assurance laboratory planning system to maximize worker preference subject to certification and preference balance constraints

This research addresses the assignment of technicians to quality control tests in a pharmaceutical manufacturing environment. The problem is complex as it includes constraints related to the capabilities of the quality assurance technicians, as well as various criteria related to efficiency, customer service, and worker satisfaction. We consider several factors that are particular to labor scheduling in the pharmaceutical industry: preference to certain types of work and certification related to training in specific tests. We propose and utilize a technician satisfaction metric and develop a heuristic to maximize this measure. Experiments are performed in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed heuristic, and gain insights regarding the relationship among key experimental factors. The results demonstrate that, in general, the proposed heuristic quickly generates scheduling assignments that provide a very good approximation of the optimal solution.