S.A. Oke - University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, (Corresponding author)
M.K.O. Ayomoh - University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria

The problem of workforce optimization has recently experienced a huge success in view of its growing importance in the operations research community. More than ever before there has been a high proliferation of research articles in the area of staff scheduling. The recent advancement is heightened as a result of a special issue offered by an academic journal in the current year. Despite the diversity of approaches and knowledge integration in the field of staff scheduling, little or no research has been made relative to the determination of an optimal level of shifting jobs in service organizations. This work is important in this direction. A linear programming model was developed to determine the minimum size of the work force of an organization. The focus is actually on jobs that require shift schedules among the workers with the utmost aim of reducing operational cost. The literature contains an update that reflects the recent rapid development of the field.

Personnel Scheduling, Job Shift, Workforce Size, Operational Cost, Optimality