Drafty Call Center Plan – Homework

You are working with a large set of temporary workers (collection of interns, retirees, etc.) to create a ‘draft’ aggregate plan to staff a night-time call center for your company. You also have a handful of full-time workers who are your ‘anchors’ – but you have already placed them in the schedule and this has led to your staffing requirements. They (full time workers) are of no concern to you in the model.

These staffing requirements are by day: you need 15,20,19,22,17,32 and 35 staff for M,T,W,Th,F,Sat,Sun. (respectively).

Some of the pool cannot work on the weekend (Saturday or Sunday). For these “Weekday Only” folks, there are 3 shifts possible – They will work 4 of the 5 weekdays, one shift will have with Tuesday off, one shift will have Wednesday off and one shift will have Thursday off.

For all others shifts (and you are not constrained by size of employee pool), a person works 4 of the 7 days each week. Workers will work 2 weekdays and both weekend days (a “2/2” shift). All possible “2” day combinations of days are relevant shifts – except any combinations where workers have 3 consecutive days off – those are not allowed and should not be in the model.

We are going with a very simple model – no costs. The objective of our model is to find the least number of workers that meet stated minimum call center daily requirements andnot have more than 6 extra workers (above min requirements) assigned during anyone day.

Also, ALL shifts (“Weekday Only” and the 2/2 shifts) can have no more than 8 people “allocated”.

Create a core model that satisfies these constraints and minimizes the total number of people needed to meet the min requirements. If it is an issue, yes, whole numbered people.