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A variable neighborhood search based matheuristic for nurse rostering problems

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  • Federico Della Croce
  • Fabio Salassa

Abstract

A practical nurse rostering problem, which arises at a ward of an Italian private hospital, is considered. In this problem, it is required each month to assign shifts to the nursing staff subject to various requirements. A matheuristic approach is introduced, based on a set of neighborhoods iteratively searched by a commercial integer programming solver within a defined global time limit, relying on a starting solution generated by the solver running on the general integer programming formulation of the problem. Generally speaking, a matheuristic algorithm is a heuristic algorithm that uses non trivial optimization and mathematical programming tools to explore the solutions space with the aim of analyzing large scale neighborhoods. Randomly generated instances, based on the considered nurse rostering problem, were solved and solutions computed by the proposed procedure are compared to the solutions achieved by pure solvers within the same time limit. The results show that the proposed solution approach outperforms the solvers in terms of solution quality. The proposed approach has also been tested on the well known Nurse Rostering Competition instances where several new best results were reached. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Federico Della Croce & Fabio Salassa, 2014. "A variable neighborhood search based matheuristic for nurse rostering problems," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 218(1), pages 185-199, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:annopr:v:218:y:2014:i:1:p:185-199:10.1007/s10479-012-1235-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s10479-012-1235-x
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    5. Rahimian, Erfan & Akartunalı, Kerem & Levine, John, 2017. "A hybrid Integer Programming and Variable Neighbourhood Search algorithm to solve Nurse Rostering Problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(2), pages 411-423.
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