Ageing workforce effects in Dual-Resource Constrained job-shop scheduling

Abstract

Currently, the ageing population is getting higher attention in production systems due to the increasing percentage of the ageing workforce, which persists longer in the working environment. Older workers are more vulnerable because of a possible decrease in physical capacities but can have a higher experience level. It is important to evaluate these factors during production process decisions and adapt the working environment to such workers. In such a way, production systems performance and workers’ well-being are jointly achieved. In companies aiming to include these aspects, digitalisation and automation can provide tools that can be used at tactical, strategic or operational levels. For example, at the operational level, wearable sensors, smart devices or trackers can be used in analysing the working time, effort and physical fatigue of operators via human-energy expenditure. These measures can be used to assess the required recovery time. However, the most challenging step is to include these measures in the decision-making process to organise the working process for operators according to their profiles and health restrictions. In this paper, we show how fatigue can be incorporated into operational processes such as scheduling in the context of a Dual-Resource Constrained (DRC) job shop. We consider several models to integrate rest allowance into the scheduling process and present a heuristic approach to assign operations to workers and machines. The impact of rest allowance on system performance is measured and managerial insights are provided.