Solving the nurse scheduling problem
Imagine that you are responsible for scheduling the shifts for the nurses in your hospital department for this week. There are three shifts in a day – morning, afternoon, and night – and for each shift, you need to assign one or more of the eight nurses who work in your department. If this sounds like a simple task, take a look at the list of relevant hospital rules:
- A nurse is not allowed to work two consecutive shifts
- A nurse is not allowed to work more than five shifts per week
- The number of nurses per shift in your department should fall within the following limits:
- Morning shift: 2-3 nurses
- Afternoon shift: 2-4 nurses
- Night shift: 1-2 nurses
In addition, each nurse can have shift preferences. For example, one nurse prefers to only work morning shifts, another nurse prefers to not work afternoon shifts, and so on.
This task is an example of the nurse scheduling problem (NSP), which can have many variants...
