Better handling of required shift patterns
complete
Jurriaan Persyn
"Currently there are some limitations for shift pattern rules:
- The all-or-nothing match semantic as a hard constraint cannot be achieved on a larger scale, especially if we can expect rules defined for (almost) every employee in the dataset.
- The solver cannot incrementally improve the match, as unassigning any shift that breaks the pattern always leads to a better score.
In fact, it would be better that this feature is changed, so that it is not a hard constraint (it's not a limitation of the real world or a legislation that always has to be fully respected), it's rather a strong soft constraint."
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Jurriaan Persyn
complete
This request was implemented as part of v0.29.0 of the Timefold Employee Shift Scheduling Model, released on 2024-11-25.
Jurriaan Persyn
in progress
We propose:
- using preferred patterns (instead of required patterns) and allowing a partial match: 80% match is better than 20% match.
- reporting every such a discrepancy through score analysis with justifications, to allow manual corrections, if needed.
That way, the solver is incentivized to incrementally improve the match between actual shifts and pattern.