1. ¹Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clearwater Bay, Hong Kong
2. ²Singapore Management University, Singapore
3. ³National University of Singapore, Singapore

Correspondence: B Rodrigues, School of Business, Singapore Management University, 469 Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259756, Singapore. E-mail: br@smu.edu.sg

Received April 2003; Accepted April 2004; Published online 24 June 2004.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a manpower allocation model with time windows which is of practical interest. This model originates from a real-life port manpower allocation problem where demand is generated from locations in the yard for servicemen who are dispatched from a central point and where the objectives are to minimize the number of servicemen used, travel distances, travel times and waiting times. We develop a tabu-embedded simulated annealing algorithm and a squeaky wheel optimization with local search algorithm for the problem. Experimental results are reported which show the effectiveness of our approaches.