1- Introduction to the Study

1.1- Background of the project

In modern times, internet is used by millions of people for various reasons. From browsing the
web to get latest news to purchasing the latest furniture for their homes; there is hardly a thing
that cannot be done with internet nowadays. Recent developments also mean organizations now
have to rely on internet for managing their complex day-to-day business activities. Managing
part-time staff and scheduling them week in week out is a complex and time-consuming task
which is done manually in most of businesses even today. This is where this project “smart
scheduling for part-time personnel” comes into play.

Smart scheduling for part-time personnel tends to deliver a system that will automate the
scheduling process for part-time employees in an organization. It will function as a web portal
that will have the capability to integrate smoothly into any business. Specifications of part-time
staff, employee information and other business activities such as payroll details will be taken into
account to develop this system, to deliver an automatic employee scheduling web portal.

Furthermore, this project will also take into account business objectives and external factors such
as employee regulation laws that prohibit a business from hiring employees for more than 20
hours a week etc. At the end of completion, the project will deliver a web portal which will take
employee available hours and process it to create the weekly schedule for the business.

1.2- Problem Context

Staff scheduling is a common problem to most organizations, from air ports to colleges, it is a
problem that no organization is spared to. Basically, it aims to assign employee to work shifts or
off days, taking into account organizational policies and external factors such as employee rights
set by the government. (Fitz-Enz, 2009) Thomson(2003) points out that the time spent by
manager on scheduling leaves manager with less time to interact with the employees and
customers. A schedule that better satisfies employees’ preferences results in better performance
and on-work productivity. To err is human, and to have a human do scheduling week in week
out is mere exposure to mistakes, which could lead to work blocks (shifts) having no employees
to take care of.

it is inconvenient for the scheduler to collect all employees’ preference in term of time and place
for the upcoming working week and then compile it all in order create the roster (Lapègue et al,
2013). Moreover, it is also hard to keep track of employee work hours in the manual system,
mainly in terms of integrity as an employee might come late but could still write the time in
attendance sheet of his wish. Different times need different number of employees present at a
certain place, whereas some places could do with one member of staff only. Taking this in
context, over staffing could mean using of extra resources more than required, where as having
less employees than required would affect the organization productivity.

Scheduling with pen and paper means the manager is responsible for assigning who works
where. This is risky in terms of employees falling victims of last-minute emergencies, a situation
that would mean that a certain shift is missing a staff member resulting in reduced productivity
for the business. Tackling this situation is where the complexity comes in though it could be
solved with predictable trends that would allow the option to shift in employees from one
department to the other.

Scheduling staff manually means that the entire work is done on papers, which is makes it very
hard to generate weekly or monthly reports that could be useful in employee monitoring and
rewarding. It is generally considered by researchers that cyclic scheduling approaches are
inflexible because they impose a rigid schedule, not adjustable to unpredictable changes.
Workload balance is usually tackled as a non-mandatory or soft constraint of the problem. When
dealing with real-life problems, the trend has been to use approximate solution approaches rather
than optimization methods. This is mainly due to their high complexity and size. However such
approximate procedures are, by nature, tailored for specific problems. Stressful factors such as
short periods of rest and long periods of work, inadequate distribution between rest and work
periods or non-standard working shifts, for example, can negatively affect the mental and
physical health of employees (Totterdell (2005)).

From a business perspective, Smart scheduling aims to contribute to the increase in both
productivity and profitability of a company. The development of an automatic scheduling
procedure and the adequate design of the schedules contribute to these goals. From an academic
point of view, this work aims to provide a wide-range approach that is able to find optimal
solutions for different real-life problems.

1.3- Rationale
According to the problem stated above, there will be a web portal developed which will take into
account staff details and generate automatic weekly schedule for part time staff. The manager of
company will enter their staff data into the database and then the manager of the company will
have the authority to create the weekly schedule based on times each employee is available.

The smart scheduling system will have the capability to assign all the staff into the work blocks
(shift) and calculate the hours each staff has worked generating the monthly payroll details too.
 1.4- Potential Benefits
1.4.1- Tangible Benefits

- Reduce workload of company manager by eliminating the need of gathering available hours of
each employee and then scheduling them

- Cut down time taken to schedule every week and resources such as paper.

- Eliminate the chances of human mistakes such as wrong entries or repetition.

- Integrate the system with other business activities such as payroll system of the company.

1.4.2- Intangible Benefits:

- Manager can have more time to interact with employees and focus on business activities.

- Improve employee satisfaction by providing better platform to detail manager about

availability, leading to more productivity; eliminating the need of submitting forms every week.

- Increase the sense of fairness by letting computer algorithm to decide who gets which slot; thus
eliminating any human favor factor.

1.4- Target users

The target users for this system are companies that hire part time employees. From companies
such as McDonald’s to institutions such as universities can all be using this system to manage
their part time staffs.

1.5- Scopes and Objectives

1.6.1- Aims:

The main aim of this project is to develop a web-based system that automatically generates
weekly schedules for part-time staff.

1.6.2- Objectives

- To computerize the weekly schedule generation for part-time employees.

- To develop a system that provides schedule viewing function for employees
- To provide a platform for the company manager to make announcements
- To develop a fully-functional user-friendly web portal.
 1.6.3 Deliverables: Functionality of the proposed system

This project will focus on the specifications of part time staff scheduling system, and on
developing a new web portal in order to automate the scheduling process taking into account
other business processes and activities that are related to scheduling such as managing
employees records, information, and extenuating circumstances in order to generate a fair weekly
schedule for employees of the company.

The system will be based on a web portal which will have three types of users. The three types of
users are administrator, manager and staff. Each user type will have different access to the
system. The three accesses in this system are admin access, the manager access and the staff
access. The admin access will be given to the highest authority of the company. The
administrator will have the authority in the system to

- Add Manager
- Add Staff
- Add Schedule
- Add branch
- Add Announcements
- Delete Manager
- Delete Staff
- Delete Schedule
- Delete Branch
- Delete announcements
- View managers
- View Staff
- Update manager information
- Update staff information
- Update announcements

The manager login will have the following authorities in the system.

- Login to the system

- Add staff
- Remove staff
- Edit staff information
- Add announcements
- Edit announcements
- Generate the schedule of work
- Edit the schedule

The staff access that is provided to the staff will provide the users the following access
- Login to the system
- View weekly schedule
- View announcements

The user (admin) will add staff into the system and will assign staff as manager or staff. A
separate scheduling page is created, which consists of two shifts; morning and evening shift. The
manager will select the date and time range for the shift he/she desires to schedule and then click
schedule button. The manager will also mention the number of staff required for a particular
shift. The system will then automatically assign the desired number of employees to each shift.
The user’s manager and admin have the authority to edit a generated schedule; this is to ensure
that any employee missing could be covered up for. Once the schedule is generated, it is
published and can be viewed by employees after they login. The staff members are all given
usernames and passwords for their login by the admin or manager. The manager can also make
announcements for extenuating circumstances.

The system will be created with enough optimization capabilities so that it could be integrated
smoothly into an organization. Depending on company/country policies more algorithms can be
added to the system to fulfill criteria. One example of such case would be the restriction of
government policies that an employee cannot work more than 20 hours a week. Such a clause
will change entire scheduling of a week.

1.6.4 Nature of challenge:

The first and basic challenge in developing this system is gathering data. Not much work has
been done previously on smart scheduling systems which makes it hard to find articles related to
similar systems. This made it extremely hard to collect authentic articles and other resources and
establish a proper understanding of scheduling systems.

Developing a smart scheduling system is no bread and butter stuff. This will be the developer’s
first exposure to such a system, which makes the task even more challenging. Smart scheduling
requires detailed understanding of algorithms to ensure an automatic schedule that fulfills all the
business and external (employee laws etc.) requirements. Tasks such as gathering the weekly
schedule and then placing each employee to a certain work block(shift) will be done with the use
of algorithms. Algorithms will also have to be developed for exceptional cases as well such as
when 2 or more employees are only available for the same shift and if that leads to one or more
block of shift having no employees. As the developer is not widely introduced to algorithms, this
will be a challenge to look forward to for the developer as it will require a lot of learning.

Furthermore, this system also requires implementation of database for it to function. Database
knowledge is also required to enhance features such as employee tracking, and reports for
employees, which in itself presents another challenge for the developer, who does not have
 commanding authority on database. Not only creating the database is a challenge, but integrating
it within the system is another challenge as well. The developer will have to choose appropriate
program to design the database and understand it in depth to carry out the requirements of this
project.

Further adding, the designing of web based portal requires extreme understanding of C# and
asp.net to ensure the web site is fully functional, responsive and user friendly. This requires a lot
of learning for the developer for both of these languages. The developer also faces a challenge in
keeping the web portal compatible and viewable for all browsers on computer and mobiles, since
this system is intended to be integrated with any business. Developer also has to ensure there are
no hard core rules that make this system a tough one to integrate into any business.

Different companies tend to have different policies, which makes it a constraint for the developer
to establish standards regarding this system. There will have to be assumptions made in certain
stages of this system development.

Lastly, the developer has to ensure security of this web portal. This web portal will be of
sensitive matter as it will be holding personal data of employees of the company. This makes it
vulnerable to data theft and hacking. Developer does not have enough knowledge in security
field so it will also require a lot of learning of security and encryption.

1.6- Overview of this report and project plan

- 1.7.1 Introduction:

This section is where the developer will be discussing initial requirements for this project, the
deliverables of this project, and why the need arises to develop this system taking into account
the problems that are there, problems to which this proposed system will be the solution. This
phase will also put light on users who will be getting benefit out of it. Lastly, the developer also
discusses the challenges that he will face during the course of development of this system.

- 1.7.2 Literature Review:

In this chapter developer will be analyzing different literatures with regards to the subject of this
project. A detailed investigation and evaluation will be done about the issued that have come
across people who are/have developing/developed similar systems, to figure out what has to be
done to eliminate those issues and carry out a successful project.

- 1.7.3 DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY:

In this chapter, developer will write about the methodology that he will be using to develop this
project and will justify the reasons for choosing a particular methodology.
- 1.7.4 PRIMARY RESEARCH
Developer will continue the research by taking opinions from different people related to subject
of this project. This will be achieved by methods such as interviewing people, observing
systems, and asking people to fill out questionnaires. The developer will then go on to explain
the reasons for the choice of questions used in questionnaire, observation of a particular system
and interview. The developer will also explain the procedure taken for the primary research too.

- 1.7.5 PRELIMINARY ARCHITECTURE

This is the chapter where the developer will present all the relevant diagrams to this system;
diagrams such as logical and physical diagrams. This phase will consist of system diagrams such
as flow charts, DFD and activity diagrams. The Developer will also be explaining the reasons for
choosing respective language(s) to develop this proposed system.

- 1.7.6 PROJECT PLAN

In this phase, developer will set a plan that will have deadlines to follow. The deadlines will be
regarding the prototype and system development of this project. Though the deadline release
parts may vary than actual date, the developer will ensure that the project is completed by the
final deadline and is tested and ready for implementation.

- 1.7.7 CONCLUSION

The Developer will be reflecting in detail what has been achieved during this first phase of the
project development. The developer will also mention any short-comings in the project before
moving on to justifying his level of satisfaction on the work that has been so far carried out.
Lastly, in this phase, the developer will try to highlight areas where he will there is room for
improvement and how it will be carried out in the second phase of this entire project. 1.7.8

- 1.7.8 REFERENCES

This section will include all the references to the articles, journals, books, audio clips, web pages
or any other type of work which has been used in development of this project. The developer will
follow Harvard referencing system as per Asia Pacific University guidelines.

- 1.7.9 Appendix

This section will contain all the important documents, which have been created or imported in
order to carry out this report. This section will contain documents like supervisor activity log
sheet. This activity log will show the meeting details between developer and project supervisor.
Moreover, this section will also include PSF (project specification form) of this project.
 2- Literature Review

2.1- Introduction:
For the purpose of gaining a better understanding of the research subject, the developer will
conduct in-depth discussion to obtain a clearer perspective of current methodology of part time
staff scheduling. The developer will focus on scheduling methods followed by different
businesses that hire part time employees.

This project is basically about part time staff management system based on a web portal. The
core function of this project is to build a staff management system that automates scheduling for
the staff. Currently scheduling is mostly done manually on pen and paper by the managers or
schedulers for the company. Part time staff give their weekly schedule to the manager and then
manager assigns each staff to different blocks before the start of each working week.
Furthermore, this scheduling process will also be integrated with other business activites such as
payroll management and staff attendance.

2.2- Domain Research:

According to Wren (1996) scheduling is “the allocation, subject to constraints, of resources to
objects being placed in space-time, in such a way as to minimize the total cost of some set of the
resources used”

Scheduling part time staff has been a subject of discussion for a while now. In the past few
decades, personnel scheduling problems have been studied widely. Wren (1996) defines
scheduling as “the allocation, subject to constraints, of resources to objects being placed in
space-time, in such a way as to minimize the total cost of some set of the resources used”.
Personnel scheduling is the process of constructing work timetables for its staff so that an
organization can satisfy the demand for its goods or services. The first part of this process
involves determining the number of staff, with particular skills, needed to meet the service
demand. (A.T. Ernst, 2004) Staff scheduling, with the recent technological developments, has
improved vastly thanks to applications that can generate automatic schedule for the staff but the
problems still remain.

The personnel scheduling problem today is very different from the one introduced by Dantzig
and Edie in the 1950s. This can be backed by Jorne Van den Bergh, who states that” The relative
importance of satisfying employee needs in staffing and scheduling decisions has grown.
Companies offer part-time contracts or flexible work hours and take into account employee
preferences (e.g., working together with someone, preference for a specific shift type, specific
days off or on and many more) when creating work schedules”. Not only scheduling staff is an
issue, but to maintain fairness and employee satisfaction is equally an issue. Companies follow
different models to maintain fairness with criteria’s such as first come first serve being the one
used most widely. Although this does bring a certain level of satisfaction, it is still an issue for
the manager if 2 employees give similar work schedule at the same time.

Staff scheduling is further complicated by external factors too. As stated by Marta Soares
Ferreira in her thesis “staff scheduling problems”, “ it is conditioned by several legal, work
and other organizational rules. And it often copes with conflicting objectives, such as the
minimization of the labor costs or the workforce size”. The external requirements imposed on a
company by the government makes scheduling even more complicated and a bigger hassle for
the scheduler. This, at times, also leads to companies having to spend more on work force than
required, hence costing the company extra money. It is extremely difficult to find good solutions
to these highly constrained and complex problems and even more difficult to determine optimal
solutions that minimize costs, meet employee preferences, distribute shifts equitably among
employees and satisfy all the workplace constraints (A.T. Ernst, 2004)

Staff scheduling this is at present done manually, like in most companies, also causes huge
wastage of resources such as paper. Adding to this, Marta Soares Ferreira,in her thesis also,
wrote “The amount of paper used by managers for scheduling every week costs the company a
huge amount of money annually”.

Adding to the studies on scheduling problems, there have been many models presented to come
up with an optimal automated scheduling for part time staff, although most of these models are
mathematical. According to a paper written by Fred Glover and Claude McMillan, “… most
efforts to automate scheduling have relied chiefly on one or another variant of linear
programming”. According to Ferguson, “A linear programming problem may be defined as a
problem of obtaining an optimal solution for a linear function subject to linear constraints, which
can be equalities of inequalities”.

Concluding the review of literature, scheduling staff is basically assigning right people at the
right time along with maintain sense of fairness and satisfaction among employees. Scheduling
part time personnel is not an easy task and is faced with a lot of constraints. Mostly companies
follow the procedure of doing it manually on paper and hence waste a lot of resources such as
paper and time that could hugely be saved. Further adding, there has been vast studies on staff
scheduling though not much of it focuses on automated schedule generation. Lastly, the
developer concludes that linear programming would be a perfect way of creating the algorithms
for generating automatic schedules.