Workforce scheduling considering physical and mental workload: A case study of domestic freight forwarding

Manufacturing industry depend heavily on logistic service provider to distribute their product. Logistic company ussualy work based on order from manufacturer. Depending on the circumtances, orders received by logistic service provider in most cases are uncertain. Fluctuations or uncertainty of order becomes a problem to many logistic companies because it affects the way they have to schedule their workers. Workforce scheduling is hence necessary for allocating appropriate worker in the right place and in the right time. Inappropriate workforce scheduling could imbalance workloads within workers which leads to worker dissatisfaction. This study therefore aims to design a workforce scheduling that consider worker workload of Domestics Freight Forwarding particularly in Company X. The research will first measure the workload, both physical and mental workload. The method used for physical workload measurement is based on calorie consumptions based on Indonesia National Standard (SNI). Whereas NASA-TLX subjective approach method is used to measure mental workload. Then, by using the result of the workload measurements, a workforce scheduling model is designed to balance the workload. Goal programing is used to model the workforce scheduling. The result of workload measurement shows that workers have low productivity but high level of mental workload, while for the physical workload there is no significant difference in each warehouse and shipping. In order to increase the utility of the workers, instead of 3 shifts it is suggested that company apply 2 shifts work systems for Checker. Also, minimizing factors that reduce the productivity such the mobility of outstation (dinas luar). (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.