BUS606: Operations and Supply Chain Management

From comparing the generated schedules using the old and new methods, there are several things to be noted. First of all, the old solution gave total overtime of 8 shifts while the new solution has total overtime of only 4 shifts. This represents a 50% reduction in overtime costs. In addition, the old solution showed two supervisors (Supervisors 3 and 4) with higher amounts of overtime compared to the rest which was an indication of unfair allocation of work. In the new solution, however, the overtime is more distributed indicating that the work has been more fairly allocated. It should also be noted that in the new solution, on two occasions, the overtime was taken during the vacation period. This is preferable to taking extra hours on a normal working day especially if this overtime occurs at the beginning or end of the supervisor vacation. In the old solution, supervisors could be seen working for more than five days without a day off while this is not visible in the new solution. Finally, the new solution has implemented the supervisors' shift preferences and this can be seen through Supervisor 2 who is mostly on the morning shift and Supervisor 4 who is mostly on the evening shift. From analysis of the results, we can conclude that the initial objectives of reducing overtime and catering for supervisor preferences have been achieved.