An evaluation of labor assignment rules when workers are not perfectly interchangeable

The dual resource constrained job shop research has considered the issue of labor flexibility. However, labor flexibility has been defined as the ability of the worker to transfer from work center to work center. A more encompassing definition used in this research is that labor flexibility is worker efficiency at each work station. With workers not equally capable at every center, assignments of different workers to the same work center results in different capacity requirements for the same job. The research here examines how to assign labor to work centers when these differences exist. The traditional labor assignment rules, when to move and where to move, are tested against rules that are created to incorporate worker efficiency information. These rules are first evaluated and then subsequently tested on differing matrices representing other labor efficiencies and with alternative dispatching rules. Results of this research indicate a departure from previous results in the dual resource constrained job shop. The research shows that selection of the rule that governs where the worker should move is the most important choice.