Optimum workforce scheduling for multiple security gates

Abstract This article presents a two-stage workforce scheduling approach for security guards at motor traffic gates. In the first stage, staffing requirements are determined based on analyzing workload variations for each gate. In the second stage, an integer programming model is formulated to assign guards to different work shifts in order to satisfy the staffing requirements of each gate. The objective is to minimize the total labour cost of two categories of security employees: non-supervising (guards), and supervising (supervisors). The new model considers multiple employee types, multiple shifts, and multiple locations, where security employees are assigned to work groups. Moreover, to maximize flexibility, each employee can be assigned to work at different gates during different shifts. Compared to the currently used schedule, the model produced an optimum work schedule that reduced the workforce size by 23% and the labour cost by 26%. Computational experiments with 40 randomly generated test problems confirmed the high savings potential of the proposed scheduling approach.