Here is a method that I thought of. I wrote this to be as general purpose as possible, envisioning situations where some people work for more shifts then others and different shifts require different numbers of people. If you need the same number of people for each shift, or if everyone works the same number of shifts you can do some shortcuts in the algorithm. You take a period, say a month or a week, and categorize all the shifts for that month(or week)by say, day, evening and night. So create a two dimensional array (or database table) with one column being the list of shifts, the next column should be the corresponding category that it falls in, and the third column should be the number of people that you need working in that shift. Additional columns(as many as the maximum number of people that you can have on one shift) should be added to hold the names of the people working in that particular shift. Create another table, the exception table. The columns should be a list of employees and the rows should be the list of shifts. Use this table to hold a severity number for any exceptions that a employee can´t work in. Calculate the total numbers of people you need for each type of shift for the period by going through the database. So now, you will have for your given period a total number of persons employed for the night shifts, day shifts and evening shifts(or however you decided to categorize the shifts). Calculate the ratios of different types of shifts. Do this by adding up the totals that you got in the previous step. Calculate a ration for each category by dividing the total for that category by the grand total that you just received. Multiply the ratio number for each category by the total number of shifts for each employee by the number of shifts that that employee has to work for that period. This will tell you how many shifts of each category the employee must work in that period. Add or subtract from any particular category for any particular employee to compensate if there were shifts added or taken off from the previous period. Now we will start putting people on shifts. Look up for the first shift what category it is and get the number of people needed that shift. Find the people who have been assigned the least number shifts for that category(if you have a situation where different people work different numbers of shifts, the way to do this is to divide the number of shifts assigned for that category for that person by the number of shifts for that category for that person still remaining still remaining - and use the guy who scores lowest) check to make sure it does not conflict with the table of exceptions(also, make sure that person wasn´t assigned in the past x shifts- or perhaps as a shift is assigned, the next x shifts in the exception table should be marked off for that guy) , and then assign him. Do this process for each shift. If there is a conflict in the exception table, set it up so that some difference between the number of shifts he did for that category and the average will cause an override , depending on the level of the severity (You can have different overrides for different severities). ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
