Optimizing Workforce Scheduling Using Binary Programming Model for a Veterinary Clinic
摘要
A veterinary clinic is a medical facility that treats sick or wounded animals. Many veterinary clinics have been set up in Malaysia to assist animal enthusiasts in treating their pets. Regular check-ups for pets, emergency, and urgent treatment, as well as boarding and grooming, are all available at the clinic. Many of the services need many staff to handle. Thus, to manage many staff and ensure that each position is well assigned, a good workforce schedule must be created. Therefore, this study modified a Binary Programming (BP) model to represent the real-life problem of workforce scheduling for a veterinary clinic. The study aimed to minimize the weekly number of staff in any working shifts to produce the optimal schedule in the veterinary clinic. This weekly schedule is created to determine the task for each staff shift, while considering the rest day in between working shifts, the minimum number of employees for each shift, among other consideration. This paper focused on two sub-case studies, and they are based on the data collected from a local veterinary clinic. The modified BP model was then solved using Open Solver software. To determine the best working schedule of veterinary staff, the results obtained by the two case studies were compared based on the shortcomings. The findings indicate that the new model could be used to offer a flexible working schedule that is both reliable and effective; however, there are also some rooms for improvement.