Operating room planning and scheduling problems: A classification scheme

The increasing interest in the domain of operating room planning and scheduling leads to a proliferation of problem types. The statement and the scope of the particular problems, however, are often unclear. In this paper, we report on a scheme to classify operating room planning and scheduling problems using multiple fields. Each field describes a specific set of characteristics of the particular problem by means of parameters, elements and optional further specifications. We also elaborate on the use of delimiters to separate the entries in the classification notation. Next to the formulation of the scheme, we examine its applicability on a range of problems that are encountered in recent literature. With the development of the classification scheme, we hope to structure and to clarify forthcoming research in this domain.