The study introduces an enhanced cyclic descent algorithm for nurse rostering. The algorithm is compared to four other rostering algorithms and to manually generated roster solutions obtained from the Gold Coast Hospital. Three criteria are developed with which the roster generation methods are assessed: these are roster schedule quality, roster shift allocation quality and execution time. A st...

This paper presents our work on decomposing a specific nurse rostering problem by cyclically assigning blocks of shifts, which are designed considering both hard and soft constraints, to groups of nurses. The rest of the shifts are then assigned to the nurses to construct a schedule based on the one cyclically generated by blocks. The schedules obtained by decomposition and construction can be ...

This paper is concerned with the development of intelligent decision support methodologies for nurse rostering problems in large modern hospital environments. We present an approach which hybridises heuristic ordering with variable neighbourhood search. We show that the search can be extended and the solution quality can be significantly improved by the careful combination and repeated use of h...

Based on experiences with the ORBIS Dienstplan-system [Mey97] — a nurse rostering system that is currently used in about 30 German hospitals — this paper describes how to use constraint processing for automatic rostering. In practice, nurse rostering problems have many varying parameters: Working time accounts, demands on crew attendance, set of used shifts, working time models, etc. Hence, ros...

Based on experiences with the ORBIS Dienstplan-system [12] – a nurse rostering system that is currently used in about 60 German hospitals – this paper describes how to use constraint processing for automatic rostering. In practice, nurse rostering problems have many varying parameters: Working time accounts, demands on crew attendance, set of used shifts, working time models, etc. Hence, roster...

This paper proposes a new memetic evolutionary algorithm to achieve explicit learning in rule-based nurse rostering, which involves applying a set of heuristic rules for each nurse’s assignment. The main framework of the algorithm is an estimation of distribution algorithm, in which an ant-miner methodology improves the individual solutions produced in each generation. Unlike our previous work ...

Guided Complete Search (GCS) is a generic framework for combining and coordinating a tree search solver and a secondary solver to yield a complete and efficient CSP solver. The primary solver of GCS is systematic tree search augmented with constraint propagation algorithm, which is used to maintain the completeness of the GCS solver. The secondary solver of GCS can either be a complete or incom...

The efficient management of nursing personnel is of critical importance in a hospital’s environment comprising a vast share of the hospital’s operational costs. The nurse scheduling process affects highly the nurses’ working conditions, which are strongly related to the provided quality of care. In this paper, we consider the rostering over a mid-term period that involves the construction of du...