Staffing and scheduling under nonstationary demand for service: A literature review

Many service systems display nonstationary demand: the number of customers fluctuates over time according to a stochastic-though to some extent predictable-pattern. To safeguard the performance of such systems, adequate personnel capacity planning (i.e., determining appropriate staffing levels and/or shift schedules) is often crucial. This paper provides a state-of-the-art literature review on staffing and scheduling approaches that account for nonstationary demand. Among references published during 1991-2013, it is possible to categorize relevant contributions according to system assumptions, performance evaluation characteristics, optimization approaches and real-life application contexts. Based on their findings, the authors develop recommendations for further research.