The Federal Express Local Sort Facility Employee Scheduling Problem

In this paper, we consider the problem of developing daily and weekly schedules for the employees at a Federal Express local sort facility. We define the key data components in this analysis, describe the work rules, present a mathematical programming formulation of the daily scheduling problem as an extension of a set partitioning problem, and present a simplification of the weekly scheduling problem. Although this paper describes a work in progress, this study has defined the key issues that will have to be considered when implementing the final system. This system has the potential to be used at hundreds of FedEx local sort facilities if the final testing of the final system is successful.