Abstract
A practical scheduling method is developed and implemented to determine the optimal allocation of technicians to candidate tour types and start times in a field service environment. Historical data is aggregated to determine a weekly work volume distribution and technician availability profile. These and other quantitative factors populate a mixed integer programming model for determining the distribution of technician tours that will minimize queueing delay in completing service, subject to side constraints on tour type quantities. The approach has been successfully implemented to schedule installation and maintenance technicians at a major telecommunication service provider and could easily be adapted to other operational contexts.
Highlights
Many commercial enterprises and public agencies employ field service technicians to provide timely on-site service for patrons
This article focuses on weekly scheduling, which involves confirming forecast work volume and total technician quantities, adjusting for nonproductive activity requirements, creating a schedule, and populating the schedule with particular employees based on skills, seniority, and preferences
The work volume profile is an aggregation of 52 weeks of historical data which can be imported from company systems using an interface ribbon accessible from the Excel main menu
Summary
Many commercial enterprises and public agencies employ field service technicians to provide timely on-site service for patrons. When total workforce capacity is consistent with work volume, the response time and appointment window performance for provided services are determined primarily by the efficacy of the employee scheduling process. This article focuses on weekly scheduling, which involves confirming forecast work volume and total technician quantities, adjusting for nonproductive activity requirements (estimating technician “availability”), creating a schedule, and populating the schedule with particular employees based on skills, seniority, and preferences. Work Volume and Technician Availability based reasoning to schedule 40,000 telecommunication service technicians with estimated cost avoidance of $250 million per year. A practical schedule optimization method is developed and implemented to minimize average job completion delay where work volume and technician availability both follow known time-varying profiles
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
