Abstract
Due to the increasing demand for logistics services with development of business activities, the third party logistics service providers (3PLs) and logistics centers play an important role in modern enterprises. The operation efficiency of a logistics center usually significantly affects the performance of business activities. Therefore, in order to increase operation efficiency, many logistics service providers invest a lot of money to improve their information systems and hardware. Since the logistics operations are mostly labor-intensive, the logistics service providers must focus on the workload balance of operators in order to improve operation efficiency of logistics centers. Furthermore, traditionally the logistics operation scheduling and work assignment rely heavily on the expertise of experienced managers to make decisions. Under such circumstance, the decision processes for logistics operation scheduling and work assignment are lack of objectivity, mismanagement and worsened business performance. In order to achieve the goal, a heuristic algorithm for logistics operation scheduling and work assignment is developed in this research. The main purpose of this research is to provide an integrated solution for logistics operation scheduling and work assignment. For logistics operation scheduling, this research focuses mainly on the load balance of operators and labor assignment for various logistics activities. For staff scheduling, the research primarily concentrates on assignment of high-efficiency operators to the corresponding logistics activities. Based on the proposed heuristic algorithm, a system for logistics operation scheduling and work assignment is also developed. Through the developed system, the optimal logistics operation schedule and work assignment can be generated. Furthermore, testing and verifing the performance of the algorithm and system by a real case data is steady. In summary, this methodology not only substantially reduces reliance on planners to assign the operations and staff but also simplifies the logistics operation scheduling and work assignment procedure.