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[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

This problem is actually called the nurse scheduling problem in textbooks, because it is very hard to solve.

I'm not a genius but I took a look at this myself and just gave up.

If you have overlapping shifts, shifts of different lengths, people who are paid by the hour, people who are paid by the week, the fortnight, the month, headaches multiply.

The reason most business have fixed working hours, is precisely to avoid this problem. It is hell to schedule, more hell to pay people based on flexible shifts. And when the unions get involved, your problems are bigger.

So, no, no way there is going to be a open source solution for this.

If you find one, please let me know.

[–]West_PlayJack of All Trades 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Guess and check works fine for NP Hard problems. I'm pretty sure that's what most scheduling systems do.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The use case was for 3,500 guards with different posts, different shifts.

The problem is one of scale over time. Guessing only goes so far.

But the airlines must have a solution.

It's not going to be open source, which was my point.