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Title: Workforce Optimisation Author: Štefan Pacinda Department / Institute: Department of Theoretical Computer Science and Mathematical Logic (KTIML) Supervisor of the master thesis: doc. RNDr. Roman Barták Ph.D., KTIML Abstract: Workforce management deals with the problem of maintaining productive workforce for example in call centers, hospitals, transportation companies etc. It includes the problem of deciding which skills are necessarily at each given time and how many personnel with given skills is required. These decisions are followed by solving the problem of allocating particular employees to shifts while satisfying the skill demands but also other constraints derived for example from law regulations, trade unions agreements, and individual preferences. This thesis deals with workforce optimization, that is with the optimal assignment of personnel to shifts in order to cover the demand for resources that vary over time. In this paper the solved problem is described in all detail and modeled as mixed integer program. Implementation details are presented and exhaustive analysis and experiments on a real life problem instance are performed to assure that the aims of the work have been met. Keywords: Rostering, Workforce Management, Shift Scheduling

In today's advanced technology world, enterprises are in a constant state of competition. As the intensity of competition increases the need to continuously improve organizational performance has never been greater. Managers at all levels must be on a constant quest for finding ways to maximize their enterprises' strategic resources. Enterprises can develop sustained competitiveness only if their activities create value in unique ways. There should be an emphasis to transfer this competitiveness to the resources it has on hand and the resources it can develop to be used in this environment. The significance of human capital is even greater now, as the intangible value and the tacit knowledge of enterprises' resources should be strategically managed to achieve a greater level of continuous organizational success. This research effort seeks to provide managers with means for accurate decision making for their workforce management. A framework for modeling and managing human capital to achieve effective workforce planning strategies is built to assist enterprise in their long term strategic organizational goals.

Thesis (MScEng (Industrial Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / Call centres form an increasingly important part of the modern day business environment and perform an important role in the strategic and operational aspects of organisations. Call centres have emerged and developed to provide efficient and cost effective communication channels between organisations and their customers. Call centres are often the largest or only channel used to access customers or for customers to access organisations. Early call centres were seen as cost centres and operated in a similar manner, often resulting in poor and unsatisfactory performance. Modern call centres are being approached in a different way. They are aligned with the strategic objectives of the organisation and are seen as performance centres and revenue drivers. Modern call centres are dynamic and complex organisations, both technologically and operationally. Performance objectives are often conflicting and controlling parameters have to be finely balanced in a volatile environment. It is therefore imperative to utilise call centres effectively and efficiently. This can only be achieved by a structured and scientific operations research based approach. The research was initiated by the requirement of a call centre design and implementation as part of a larger business process reengineering project. The thesis provides an overview of the call centre environment and operational aspects. A structured call centre design model is reviewed and two aspects namely workforce management and performance management are found to form the core of the design and operations activities. The call centre design model is then integrated with the proposed workforce management and performance management models. These models are developed using scientific operations research approach. The structured modelling approach is then used to guide the design, operation, and optimisation of the call centre of the case study. The structured and scientific operations research based approach proved to be of great significance when confronted with the dynamic and complex call centre environment. Through using the structured approach the design, operation, and optimisation activities could be conducted successfully and performance objectives were reached.

No / NHS maternity services in England must increase productivity if the NHS is to make efficiency savings by 2014. At the same time, it is expected to maintain or improve patient outcomes such as safety and quality. Given staff costs are 60% of the budget; it is likely that either the number or composition of the workforce will need to be changed to meet these targets. In this article, the authors argue that very little is known about the impact of altering the skill mix on either productivity or patient outcomes. Furthermore, it is unclear whether output and outcomes are themselves trade-offs between increased workload, increased number of deliveries and the increased complexity of demand.

No / Jayne Donaldson, Bryan McIntosh and Simon Jones argue that England can learn from Scotland's approaches to the nature of hospital capacity and the workforce's delivery of service.

This undergraduate thesis discusses how a new type of workforce management system successfully can be developed from a socio-technical perspective for businesses in the home care service to adopt and benefit from the tool. To answer the question “How can companies that develop high-tech workforce management systems (WFM-systems) towards the home care sector use The technology adoption life cycle for the tool to go from innovation to industry standard?”. A qualitative method is used in the form of a case study. To collect the empirical material, semi-structured interviews were conducted with respondents from three different Swedish home companies services and a company that is developing a high-tech WFM-system for the home care sector. The substrate for the theory is based on how companies that develop high-tech WFM-systems can be inspired by The technology adoption life cycle to increase their competitiveness and avoid collapse due to the gaps that exist between different market segments and their varying needs.  Through analyzes of the collected empirical data, the authors of this thesis have concluded that the home care sector is facing a digital transformation where the implementation of high-tech WFM-systems is considered necessary. The reason behind this is that high-tech tools that use advanced algorithms for scheduling can improve resource management, while reducing costs and travel times. In order for the implementation to achieve the desired effect, these tools need to be developed in accordance with a socio-technical perspective where both home care businesses and technically able developers work together to create tools that have a positive impact on the future of the industry. / I denna uppsats diskuteras hur en ny typ av workforce management system framgångsrikt kan utvecklas utifrån ett sociotekniskt perspektiv för att verksamheter inom hemtjänsten ska anamma och dra nytta av verktyget. För att svara på frågeställningen “Hur kan verksamheter som utvecklar högteknologiska workforce management systems (WFM-system) mot hemtjänsten använda The Technology Adoption Life Cycle för att verktyget ska gå från innovation till branschstandard?” används en kvalitativ metod i form av en fallstudie. För att samla in det empiriska materialet genomfördes semistrukturerade intervjuer med respondenter från tre olika svenska hemtjänstverksamheter och ett företag som utvecklar ett högteknologiskt WFM-system mot hemtjänsten. Underlaget för teorin bygger på hur verksamheter som utvecklar högteknologiska WFM-system kan inspireras av The Technology Adoption Life Cycle för att öka sin konkurrenskraft och undvika att gå under på grund av de klyftor som finns mellan olika marknadssegment och deras varierande behov.  Genom analyser av den insamlade empirin har författarna av denna uppsats dragit slutsatsen att hemtjänsten står inför en digital transformation där implementeringen av nya högteknologiska WFM-system anses nödvändigt. Anledningen är då nya högteknologiska verktyg som använder smarta algoritmer för att schemalägga förbättrar resurshanteringen, samtidigt som kostnader och de sammanlagda restiderna minskar. För att implementationen ska skapa önskad effekt behöver verktyg utvecklas i enlighet med ett sociotekniskt perspektiv där likväl hemtjänstverksamheter och tekniskt kunniga utvecklare samarbetar för att skapa verktyg som har en positiv inverkan på branschens framtid.

Since the ability of Workforce Management Systems to handle mobility induced challenges of mobile environments like data-communication cut-offs, reduced network bandwidth, and security concerns improved recently, the optimization efforts of mobile enterprises increasingly focus on the organizational setup of their mobile environment. This includes issues like, e.g., the dimension and staffing of regional subdivisions, qualification balance of the workforce, and resource allocation strategies. While this multitude of possible adjustment parameters for optimization prevents from the analytical prediction of organizational change efforts, simulation is a promising approach to analyze mobile environments and their change. In this work we present a formal model representing a generalization of mobile environments. This model can be utilized to examine the cost situation and performance of both real mobile enterprises and projected future development scenarios of such enterprises. The model is developed using colored petri nets (CPN) and the software suite CPN Tools. We show that our model is capable of predicting the outcomes of organizational change projects by the utilization of simulation and present a validation of our model based on real-world data of a German gas and power supply.

A formação e o provimento de profissionais de saúde são parte das estratégias que vêm sendo utilizadas pelos países para aumentar a capacidade de resposta dos seus sistemas de saúde e, assim, melhorar a qualidade de vida das suas populações. Recentemente, o governo brasileiro criou uma lei, instituindo um programa para melhorar a capacidade de resposta para escassez de médicos em áreas remotas, intitulado Programa Mais Médicos. Uma das ações polêmicas desse programa foi a importação de médicos cubanos, através de uma cooperação Cuba-Brasil, mediada pela Organização Pan-americana de Saúde (OPAS). Trata-se de uma iniciativa de grande vulto que envolveu, de 2011 a 2015, um total de 18 mil e 24 mil médicos novos no SUS. Nesse sentido, ganha relevância a análise do Programa Mais Médicos como política recém-implantada em contexto brasileiro, que constitui o objeto deste projeto de pesquisa. Este estudo de caso focaliza o provimento, fundamentalmente na cooperação Cuba-Brasil. Para analisar o programa, adota-se a abordagem do Ciclo de Políticas (Howlett e Ramesh, 2003) que organiza o estudo da política em cinco fases: (a) preparação da agenda, (b) formulação da política, (c) tomada de decisão, (d) implementação e (e) avaliação, adaptado pela análise de contexto de Bowe & Ball, 1992 que defende a análise de políticas a partir do seu campo de prática. Entrevistas com atores chaves, análise documental e estudo de caso foram desenvolvidos. Para o estudo de caso, focalizamos o PMM no Estado do Ceará e visitamos duas cidades no interior do Brasil neste mesmo estado. Os cenários de implementação do programa, as unidades com médicos cubanos e os espaços de supervisão foram os objetos de observação de campo da investigadora. O objetivo do estudo foi analisar os macro e micro efeitos da Cooperação Cuba- Brasil no trabalho médico brasileiro em APS, investigar seu potencial de inovação para o trabalho médico nas Américas e acompanhar todo o ciclo da política em questão, desde a sua entrada na agenda governamental até os mecanismos de avaliação, incluindo a identificação de desdobramentos para as políticas locais dos casos estudados. Ademais, construir novos saberes no campo da análise de políticas, inovações e provimento de profissionais de saúde no mundo. Na dimensão macropolítica, as entrevistas mostram a prática e a educação médica voltada para a atenção especializada, orientada pelo mercado, com um uso exagerado de tecnologias de alta densidade, comparados aos médicos cubanos. Os médicos cubanos trazem uma nova perspectiva para os profissionais de saúde na forma de construir vínculos com os usuários e na maneira de lidar com a pobreza e a iniquidade. Na dimensão micropolítica, ambos, brasileiros e cubanos, se beneficiam de estratégias de educação permanente, supervisão em loco, cursos EAD, rodas de conversa para discussão de problemas, grupos de troca de experiência e compartilhamento de estratégias no planejamento local. Um dos principais problemas apontados no programa é que a estratégia de provisão é temporária, não está bem afinada com a corporação médica brasileira e as supervisões não são bem organizadas pelas Universidades. Demonstra também a fragilidade na articulação entre gestão local e nacional na organização do processo / The education and provision of health professionals are the main strategies to increase capacity and respond to health systems needs among countries worldwide. Recently, the Brazilian government passed a law to create a national program, called the More Doctors Program, to improve the capacity to respond to the demand for doctors in underserved areas. The law was designed with three main axes: provision, education and infrastructure. The first, provision, would increase the provision of medical doctors through monetary and non-monetary incentives to attract national and foreign doctors to work in remote areas. The education axis was related to opening new Courses and Institutions to graduate new doctors in remote areas. The third axis was to improve primary care facilities. However, the most controversial aspect of this Program was the partnership between Cuba and Brazil, through an international cooperation mediated by the Pan-American Health Organization. It involved 18,240 new primary care physicians. Focusing on provision, mainly in the Brazil-Cuba international cooperation, a qualitative study was designed and conducted, analyzing the More Doctors policy cycle, using Howlet & Ramesh, 2003 as well as Ball, 1992 as a reference. This study examined the five stages of the policy cycle: agenda preparation, policy formulation, decision making, implementation and evaluation and context analysis and evaluation on the Ball cycle. Ball argues that policy has to be analyzed in the field. Interviews with stakeholders, document analysis and case studies were developed. As part of the case study, there were visits to three cities in the interior of Brazil; the researchers observed the locally managed education and program. The objective of the study was to investigate the macro and micro effects of Brazilian and Cuban physicians work processes in the Brazilian primary care units served by the program, as well as analyzing the policy as an innovation in health workforce management in the Americas and exploring the whole policy cycle and the implications for medical workforce management in Brazil. On the macro level, the interviews show that in Brazil medical education and practice are market oriented and focused on specialized care, with an overuse of high-technology resources, compared to Cuban doctors. All the Cuban physicians in Brazil were educated as General Practitioners. In addition, there could be an influence of the Cuban socialist model. The Cuban doctors bring a new perspective to Brazilian health professionals on how to build linkages with the users and how to deal with poverty and inequity. On the micro level, both groups benefited from ongoing learning strategies, supervisions in locus, distance learning courses, round tables on the main health problems, group practice sharing, and the interchange on health local planning. The main problems involve the temporary nature of the provision strategy, which is not well resolved with the Brazilian medical corporations and professional bodies. Furthermore, the supervisions are not always well organized by the Universities. The study also shows the fragilities of federative integration regarding policy implementation and management

A formação e o provimento de profissionais de saúde são parte das estratégias que vêm sendo utilizadas pelos países para aumentar a capacidade de resposta dos seus sistemas de saúde e, assim, melhorar a qualidade de vida das suas populações. Recentemente, o governo brasileiro criou uma lei, instituindo um programa para melhorar a capacidade de resposta para escassez de médicos em áreas remotas, intitulado Programa Mais Médicos. Uma das ações polêmicas desse programa foi a importação de médicos cubanos, através de uma cooperação Cuba-Brasil, mediada pela Organização Pan-americana de Saúde (OPAS). Trata-se de uma iniciativa de grande vulto que envolveu, de 2011 a 2015, um total de 18 mil e 24 mil médicos novos no SUS. Nesse sentido, ganha relevância a análise do Programa Mais Médicos como política recém-implantada em contexto brasileiro, que constitui o objeto deste projeto de pesquisa. Este estudo de caso focaliza o provimento, fundamentalmente na cooperação Cuba-Brasil. Para analisar o programa, adota-se a abordagem do Ciclo de Políticas (Howlett e Ramesh, 2003) que organiza o estudo da política em cinco fases: (a) preparação da agenda, (b) formulação da política, (c) tomada de decisão, (d) implementação e (e) avaliação, adaptado pela análise de contexto de Bowe & Ball, 1992 que defende a análise de políticas a partir do seu campo de prática. Entrevistas com atores chaves, análise documental e estudo de caso foram desenvolvidos. Para o estudo de caso, focalizamos o PMM no Estado do Ceará e visitamos duas cidades no interior do Brasil neste mesmo estado. Os cenários de implementação do programa, as unidades com médicos cubanos e os espaços de supervisão foram os objetos de observação de campo da investigadora. O objetivo do estudo foi analisar os macro e micro efeitos da Cooperação Cuba- Brasil no trabalho médico brasileiro em APS, investigar seu potencial de inovação para o trabalho médico nas Américas e acompanhar todo o ciclo da política em questão, desde a sua entrada na agenda governamental até os mecanismos de avaliação, incluindo a identificação de desdobramentos para as políticas locais dos casos estudados. Ademais, construir novos saberes no campo da análise de políticas, inovações e provimento de profissionais de saúde no mundo. Na dimensão macropolítica, as entrevistas mostram a prática e a educação médica voltada para a atenção especializada, orientada pelo mercado, com um uso exagerado de tecnologias de alta densidade, comparados aos médicos cubanos. Os médicos cubanos trazem uma nova perspectiva para os profissionais de saúde na forma de construir vínculos com os usuários e na maneira de lidar com a pobreza e a iniquidade. Na dimensão micropolítica, ambos, brasileiros e cubanos, se beneficiam de estratégias de educação permanente, supervisão em loco, cursos EAD, rodas de conversa para discussão de problemas, grupos de troca de experiência e compartilhamento de estratégias no planejamento local. Um dos principais problemas apontados no programa é que a estratégia de provisão é temporária, não está bem afinada com a corporação médica brasileira e as supervisões não são bem organizadas pelas Universidades. Demonstra também a fragilidade na articulação entre gestão local e nacional na organização do processo / The education and provision of health professionals are the main strategies to increase capacity and respond to health systems needs among countries worldwide. Recently, the Brazilian government passed a law to create a national program, called the More Doctors Program, to improve the capacity to respond to the demand for doctors in underserved areas. The law was designed with three main axes: provision, education and infrastructure. The first, provision, would increase the provision of medical doctors through monetary and non-monetary incentives to attract national and foreign doctors to work in remote areas. The education axis was related to opening new Courses and Institutions to graduate new doctors in remote areas. The third axis was to improve primary care facilities. However, the most controversial aspect of this Program was the partnership between Cuba and Brazil, through an international cooperation mediated by the Pan-American Health Organization. It involved 18,240 new primary care physicians. Focusing on provision, mainly in the Brazil-Cuba international cooperation, a qualitative study was designed and conducted, analyzing the More Doctors policy cycle, using Howlet & Ramesh, 2003 as well as Ball, 1992 as a reference. This study examined the five stages of the policy cycle: agenda preparation, policy formulation, decision making, implementation and evaluation and context analysis and evaluation on the Ball cycle. Ball argues that policy has to be analyzed in the field. Interviews with stakeholders, document analysis and case studies were developed. As part of the case study, there were visits to three cities in the interior of Brazil; the researchers observed the locally managed education and program. The objective of the study was to investigate the macro and micro effects of Brazilian and Cuban physicians work processes in the Brazilian primary care units served by the program, as well as analyzing the policy as an innovation in health workforce management in the Americas and exploring the whole policy cycle and the implications for medical workforce management in Brazil. On the macro level, the interviews show that in Brazil medical education and practice are market oriented and focused on specialized care, with an overuse of high-technology resources, compared to Cuban doctors. All the Cuban physicians in Brazil were educated as General Practitioners. In addition, there could be an influence of the Cuban socialist model. The Cuban doctors bring a new perspective to Brazilian health professionals on how to build linkages with the users and how to deal with poverty and inequity. On the micro level, both groups benefited from ongoing learning strategies, supervisions in locus, distance learning courses, round tables on the main health problems, group practice sharing, and the interchange on health local planning. The main problems involve the temporary nature of the provision strategy, which is not well resolved with the Brazilian medical corporations and professional bodies. Furthermore, the supervisions are not always well organized by the Universities. The study also shows the fragilities of federative integration regarding policy implementation and management