Presenter: Sune Lauth Ladegaard, AU

Abstract : Most Danish kindergartens these days make use of an electronic system for registering the arrival and departure of each individual child. This gives a very large amount of data describing the “demand patterns” for the pedagogues. However, these data are most often not used directly when making the workforce plans, which may lead to overstaffing in some periods and understaffing in others. Especially the understaffed periods may lead to suboptimal working conditions for the pedagogues and as importantly, to low well-being for the children. 

Furthermore, in recent years, a political push towards improving the child-to-adult ratio has emerged likewise demanding better use of the personnel resources. Thus, from both the perspective of the children, the pedagogues, and the public administration, making better use of the resources is desirable. 

In this talk we will describe a MIP based approach to workforce scheduling in Danish kindergartens together with results and some issues incurred. 

Organizor: Erland Hein Nielsen