Development of a workforce management system for a customer hotline service

An integrated workforce management system was developed for a 24-h hotline service. It first applies either a regression model or simulation model to relate the target abandonment rates with the required hourly staffing level, which is then converted into the daily requirements of senior and junior officers by use of a mixed integer programming approach. The last phase involves extending Burns and Carter algorithm to schedule the monthly roster with emphasis on both employee equity and management specifications. Implementation is under Microsoft Office 95 on a 586 PC. Comparison with the manual schedule shows significant savings in time and a higher degree of constraint satisfaction.