Scheduling in the service industries: An overview

Scheduling plays an important role in many different service industries. In this paper we provide an overview of some of the more important scheduling problems that appear in the various service industries. We focus on the formulations of such problems as well as on the techniques used for solving those problems. We consider five areas of scheduling in service industries, namely (i) project scheduling, (ii) workforce scheduling, (iii) timetabling, reservations, and appointments, (iv) transportation scheduling, and (v) scheduling in entertainment. The first two areas are fairly general and have applications in many different service industries. The third, fourth and fifth areas are more related to some very specific service industries, namely the hospitality and health care industries, the transportation industries (of passengers as well as of cargo), and the entertainment industries. In our conclusion section we discuss the similarities and the differences between the problem formulations and solution techniques used in the various different industries and we also discuss the design of the decision support systems that have been developed for scheduling in the service industries.