An Evaluation of Tour Scheduling Heuristics with Differences in Employee Productivity and Cost

This study focuses on the manpower tour scheduling problem using data from a lockbox system of a commercial bank. The lockbox system uses employees who differ in productivity, hourly cost, number of available working hours per week, and days‐off constraints. These specific problem characteristics require a more general problem formulation and solution procedure for the manpower tour scheduling problem than addressed in previous research. Four heuristic methods for solving the problem (three developed here and a simple round‐up procedure) are tested on a set of forty problems. The results of this study show the effort to develop sophisticated heuristic methods for this class of problems is well justified.