NYNEX Must Schedule Round-The-Clock Coverage for Its Telephone Operators

Essay

NYNEX must schedule round-the-clock coverage for its telephone operators. To keep the number of different shifts down to a manageable level, it has only four different shifts. Operators work eight-hour shifts and can begin work at either midnight, 8 a.m., noon, or 4 p.m. Operators are needed according to the following demand pattern, given in four-hour time blocks.

Formulate this scheduling decision as a linear programming problem, defining fully your decision variables and then giving the objective function and constraints.