caa a22 4500 463202791 CHVBK 20180405153116.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170326e20070801xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10732-007-9013-7 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10732-007-9013-7 An electromagnetic meta-heuristic for the nurse scheduling problem [Elektronische Daten] [Broos Maenhout, Mario Vanhoucke] In this paper, we present a novel meta-heuristic technique for the nurse scheduling problem (NSP). This well-known scheduling problem assigns nurses to shifts per day maximizing the overall quality of the roster while taking various constraints into account. The problem is known to be NP-hard. Due to its complexity and relevance, many algorithms have been developed to solve practical and often case-specific models of the NSP. The huge variety of constraints and the several objective function possibilities have led to exact and meta-heuristic procedures in various guises, and hence comparison and state-of-the-art reporting of standard results seem to be a utopian idea. We present a meta-heuristic procedure for the NSP based on the framework proposed by Birbil and Fang (J. Glob. Opt. 25, 263-282, 2003). The Electromagnetic (EM) approach is based on the theory of physics, and simulates attraction and repulsion of sample points in order to move towards a promising solution. Moreover, we present computational experiments on a standard benchmark dataset, and solve problem instances under different assumptions. We show that the proposed procedure performs consistently well under many different circumstances, and hence, can be considered as robust against case-specific constraints. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 2007 Electromagnetic meta-heuristic nationallicence Local search nationallicence Nurse scheduling nationallicence Maenhout Broos Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium aut Vanhoucke Mario Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium aut Journal of Heuristics Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers; http://www.springer-ny.com 13/4(2007-08-01), 359-385 1381-1231 13:4<359 2007 13 10732 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-007-9013-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-007-9013-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Maenhout Broos Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Vanhoucke Mario Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Journal of Heuristics Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers; http://www.springer-ny.com 13/4(2007-08-01), 359-385 1381-1231 13:4<359 2007 13 10732 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer