A Heuristic Model for Scheduling Repairmen to Jobs Using Deterministic Parameters

摘要

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a scheduling model to assign repairmen to standardized jobs in a utility company. The utility company studied is Columbia Gas Company which operates a service center for its repairmen in Columbus, Ohio. Two heuristic models are developed to do the required scheduling for the service center using deterministic parameters for cost, travel time, work time required and worker hours available. The first heuristic model employs a cost parameter which takes the current company assignment rules into consideration and makes assignments from the lowest cost to the highest cost. The second heuristic model uses travel time for workers to travel to jobs as the criteria for making assignments. The worker with the lowest travel time to a job is assigned to that job, and workers continue to be assigned to jobs as their travel time becomes the lowest time available. Both heuristics are compared with the present method of the foremen making the assignments based on their past experience. The method of comparison employs historical data to accomplish both cost analysis and a quality of assignments analysis. Both heuristic models reduce the cost of carrying out the assignments, but the quality of the assignments made is better using the first heuristic model which concentrates on following the current assignment rules of the company. (Author)