Workforce management and vacation planning : a case study in bank branches.

Abstract

The problem of vacation and workforce allocation has been a broad field for conducting research in management and operational research. However, even though it is a common and well-known problem, finding good solutions is usually a difficult task given its combinatorial feature, making it even more difficult to find the optimal solution in order to minimize costs, tailor planning to workers' preferences, distribute shifts equally and meet the constraints of labor. This paper addresses the vacation and workforce allocation problem considering a banking sector scenario, developing a solution approach based on heuristic procedures and mixed integer linear programming. As a result, the proposed approach was able to generate a coverage and allocation matrix for workers and identify shortcomings in the company's vacation coverage capacity.