New Approach Combining Branch and Price with Metaheuristics to Solve Nurse Scheduling Problem

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach combining Branch and Price (B&P) with metaheuristics to derive various high-quality schedules as solutions to a nurse scheduling problem (nurse rostering problem). There are two main features of our approach. The first is the combination of B&P and metaheuristics, and the second is the implementation of an efficient B&P algorithm. Through applying our approach to widely used benchmark instances, the effectiveness of our approach is determined.