Efficient shift scheduling in the retail sector through two-stage optimization

Efficient workforce scheduling has an important impact on store profit and customer service. Standard scheduling problems do not recognize the effect of staff availability on customer sales, however, even though the latter is an important factor in the retail sector. In this paper a two-stage model is proposed for this purpose. In the first stage a sales response model is used to specify hourly staff requirements. The output of the sales response model is then used as the input of a mixed integer optimization model, which finds an optimum assignment of the staff to daily shifts. Simulations are used to validate the sales response function, and to revise the model for more accurate results. In the simulations, customer arrivals and sales response error values are generated using appropriate distribution functions. As a case study the proposed model is applied to a Turkish retailer in the apparel sector. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.