Optimization of a task schedule for teams with members having various skills

Abstract

We consider the real-life problem of planning tasks for teams in a corporation, in conditions of some restrictions. The problem takes into account various constraints, such as for instance flexible working hours, common meeting periods, time set aside for self-learning, lunchtimes and periodic performance of tasks. Additionally, only a part of the team may participate in meetings, and each team member may have their own periodic tasks such as self-development. We propose an algorithm that is an extension of the algorithm dedicated for scheduling on parallel unrelated processors with the makespan criterion. Our approach assumes that each task can be defined by a subset of employees or an entire team. However, each worker is of a different efficiency, so task completion times may differ. Moreover, the tasks are prioritized. The problem is NP-hard. Numerical experiments cover benchmarks with 10 instances of 100 tasks assigned to a 5-person team. For all instances, various algorithms such as branch-and-bound, genetic and tabu search have been tested.