Integer programming method for employee shift scheduling problem

Abstract

Restaurant XYZ is a restaurant located in Purbalingga that requires employees to operate or serve their consumers every day. Currently, they have a problem related to employee scheduling. Their employee scheduling is still made manually, so it needs quite a long time to finish the schedule. Moreover, it becomes more complicated if there are employees who are suddenly absent in their shift. Another problem is the unequal distribution of employees' schedules, resulting in several employees getting more or fewer working hours. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the scheduling of Restaurants XYZ's employees with an exact method, namely the Integer Programming (IP) method. The IP method can generate schedules that meet all constraints, and is more flexible, where users can easily add new data and constraints as needed. This study indicates that employee scheduling with the IP method has met all the constraints with a population size of 20 employees. In addition, the total value of the objective function or the total preference of employees' days off is 1670 days.