Healthcare Staff Scheduling: Emerging Fuzzy Optimization Approaches

Healthcare operations, in hospitals and home healthcare settings, are inundated with complex fuzzy features that impose difficulties in the creation of work schedules. This book presents in-depth research on emerging approaches to healthcare staff scheduling. It starts by reviewing the key issues and challenges inherent in staff scheduling, along with the basic concepts of fuzzy set theory. Examining cutting-edge research applications, it details fuzzy optimization algorithms derived from biologically inspired approaches and fuzzy theory. Facilitating a practical and in-depth understanding of modern fuzzy metaheuristic optimization approaches, the book presents recent research on multi-criteria algorithms and their applications in healthcare operations, particularly staff scheduling.

Michael Mutingi is a lecturer in industrial engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at the University of Botswana. He has professional experience as a research associate at the National University of Singapore and as a lecturer in industrial engineering at the National University of Science & Technology, Zimbabwe. He is completing his PhD in engineering management at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, majoring in healthcare operations management. Mutingi obtained his MEng and BEng in industrial engineering from the National University of Science & Technology, Zimbabwe. He researches healthcare operations management, supply chain management, manufacturing systems, biologically inspired metaheuristic optimization, and operations research applications. Michael Mutingi is a member of the Southern African Institution of Industrial Engineers and the System Dynamics Society. He has published in international journals, such as Computers & Industrial Engineering, Production Planning & Control, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, International Journal of Production Research, and Maintenance & Reliability.

Charles Mbohwa is a professor of operations management at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Previously he was a senior lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Zimbabwe and a mechanical engineer at the National Railways of Zimbabwe. He has a doctor of engineering from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology, an MSc in operations management and manufacturing systems from the University of Nottingham, UK, and a BSc with honors in mechanical engineering from the University of Zimbabwe. He has been a British Council Scholar, a Japan Foundation Fellow, a Heiwa Nakajima Fellow, a Kubota Foundation Fellow, and a Fulbright Fellow. His research interests are in operations management, engineering management, supply chain managem