This dissertation examines labor scheduling in a tour environment. The impetus for this research lies in the lack of improvement in service sector productivity compared to manufacturing productivity since 1960. A contributing factor in this lack of productivity improvement is the inability of service delivery systems to stockpile product during periods of low demand for use in periods of high demand. This inability means that service delivery systems must often have large amounts of overcapacity during periods of low demand in order to meet requirements during periods of high demand. Thus, any increase in the efficiency with which labor is scheduled will lead to an increase in labor utilization and subsequently productivity. / This dissertation examines four scheduling flexibility factors, shift length, meal-break window, start-time interval, and tour length, which were found in previous research to have an effect on labor utilization. These factors were examined in an environment that is typical of service systems such as department stores, restaurants, amusement parks, etc. / The results of the analysis indicated that shift length and meal-break window are the important factors in determining labor utilization for the environment used in this dissertation. The analysis also indicated that ILP solutions to labor scheduling problems may have undesirable characteristics. The implications of these findings are that (1) efforts to improve labor utilization should concentrate on labor policies affecting shift length and meal-break window and (2) labor scheduling approaches which rely on optimal solutions should examine the surplus labor that is scheduled. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-03, Section: B, page: 1588. / Major Professor: William A. Shrode. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76634 |
| Contributors | Johns, Tony Reid., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 308 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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