The art and science of designing rotating schedules

Abstract

Rotating schedules are commonly used in a number of industries and public services where employees work round the clock, seven days a week. Several rules govern the design of such schedules. While this problem can be formulated as an integer linear program, this methodology is often too rigid. In this paper I argue that to obtain rotating schedules that are acceptable in practice, rules often have to be broken so that designing good schedules is more of an art than a science.