Staffing problems – which require difficult decisions about the recruitment, training, layoffs, and scheduling of workers – are common across a broad range of manufacturing and service industries. In this example, you’ll learn how to model and solve a complex staffing problem by creating an optimal multi-period operation plan that minimizes the total number of layoffs and costs.
More information on this type of model can be found in example #5 of the fifth edition of Model Building in Mathematical Programming by H. Paul Williams on pages 256 – 257 and 303 – 304.
This modeling example is at the advanced level, where we assume that you know Python and the Gurobi Python API and that you have advanced knowledge of building mathematical optimization models. Typically, the objective function and/or constraints of these examples are complex or require advanced features of the Gurobi Python API.