Column Generation Method for an Agent Scheduling Problem

This paper discusses a real life problem of daily schedule planning for customer visiting agents. An optimization scheme using a combination of column generation and rounding techniques is proposed for solving this problem. In order to realize an efficient implementation, a polynomial time algorithm is presented for the column generation subproblem. Some technical implementation issues are also discussed and finally, experimental results are shown on real-life problem instances. An implementation of the presented solution is currently in production use by one of the leading contact center service providers of Hungary.