TEMPLE - A domain specific language for modeling and solving staff scheduling problems

We present TEMPLE, a domain specific language for modeling and solving staff scheduling problems. TEMPLE provides a set of intuitive abstractions and notations allowing to formulate the constraints of a particular problem in a very compact and natural way. After modeling a staff scheduling problem in TEMPLE, three generic local search algorithms can immediately be applied to the corresponding optimization problem. We show how real-life staff scheduling problems can be both effectively modeled as well as efficiently solved using our approach. Finally, we report on a practical application of TEMPLE in a commercial staff scheduling software.