Development of a Production Line Work Schedule Generation System Based on Mixed Integer Optimization

Abstract

At workplaces that mostly rely on part-time workers, such as product manufacturing lines and factories, limit the working hours of their employees. Therefore, work scheduling is a very important task in the project management. However, the work schedule needs to be carefully prepared to ensure service levels, to consider the load balancing among employees and to meet the many demands. The Scheduler plans the schedule by trial and error. Hence, shift scheduling is spent considerable amount of time and effort. In this study, we develop a work scheduling system that satisfies the constraints considered at the manufacturing site in order to reduce the mutual burden of workers, schedule makers, and schedule managers. In this paper, we formulate work scheduling as a mixed integer optimization problem and propose a work scheduling method that considers the exact optimal solution. Optimization experiments have been conducted in a problem setting based on real data provided by a large-scale food manufacturer, where mostly rely on part-time workers. As a result, it was confirmed that the proposed system could create work schedules that satisfies the required level, and the utility of the proposed system is discussed.