Fair workload assignment to subcontractor companies at a container terminal

Manpower planning and scheduling in a port ambit are very peculiar problems. As explained in [1],[2], due to their specific features, the classical OR models devised for similar problems in different contexts cannot have straightforward application. The scientific literature on this issues is not rich, even though recently some new contributions have been proposed [2],[3]. In this talk we focus on a human resources management problem arising at the transhipment container terminal housed in the Gioia Tauro port. Here a considerable part of the manpower is outsourced, to cope with peak demand, mainly as far as raisers are concerned. Smooth management of the external human resources requires fair assignment of the workload both for individuals and for companies. In fact daily shifts are not equally desirable (night or holiday time shifts are considered particularly heavy). Our model accounts for a well balanced assignment on a given time horizon. It is based on an appropriate composition of individual and group rationality. In addition the model embeds the possibility of taking into account historical data to improve assignment fairness. The resulting problem is an ILP with min-max objective function. References [1] P.Legato, M.F. Monaco, Human resources management at a marine container tterminal, European Journal of Operational Research 56, pp. 769-781 (2004). [2] M.F. Monaco, M. Sammarra, Manpower daily planning at a maritime container terminal. XLI AIRO Conference: Operations Reserch for Complex Decision Making (2010). [3] M. Di Francesco, G. Fancello, P. Serra, P. Zuddas, Optimal management of human resources in transhipment container ports. Maritime Policy & Management 42(2), pp. 127-144 (2015). [4] D.M.L. Nuria, Z. Simone, P. Zuddas, An optimization model for the short-term manpower planning problem in transhipment container terminals, Computers & Industrial Engineering, (2016) in press.