Two-level decomposition algorithm for shift scheduling problems

We propose a new two-level decomposition algorithm for shift scheduling problems. The problem determines the assignment of duties and rest days to the set of staff members to minimize the given objective function. The constraint on the set of staff members are considered. The objective of this paper is to achieve the minimization of total costs with fairness of working conditions. The proposed method decomposes the original problem into the master and the subproblems. These subproblems are iteratively solved with embedding cuts into the master problem. Computational results show that the performance of the proposed method outperforms a general-purpose constraint logic programming solver.