Home Improvement Store (ACME)

Employee
Scheduling Problem
Background Information
Acme Home Improvements, Inc. was founded in 1982 in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.
By 2007 the company had 125 stores along the US East Coast from Florida to Maine.
Its annual sales are currently $5,400,000,000 with $280,000,000 net income. The
average store is about 100,000 square feet with an additional 10,000 square feet of
outside garden center. The stores typically carry 40,000 different products from 5,000
vendors worldwide. Major US competitors include Ace, Home Depot, Lowe's and
TruValue.
In the interest of seeking greater profits, Acme has determined to follow Home Depot
and other competitors to Canada and Mexico. In the latter, it has established, in
accordance with Mexican law, a joint venture with local interests, known as Acme Home
Improvements de Mxico, SA de CV. There are five major product groups within each
Acme store: plumbing and electrical supplies, building materials, hardware and tools,
seasonal and garden/yard items, and paint, flooring and wall coverings.
Each store has a store manager, assistant store manager, bookkeeper, an information
systems manager and an assistant, a manager for each of the five major product
groups, customer service employees on the store floor to assist customers with their
purchases, cashiers, receiving/stocking employees, and maintenance/janitorial
employees.

Employee Assignment Schedule

To the extent permitted by local law, each Acme Home Improvements store, including
AMC, is open from 7 am - 11 pm every day. AMC planners have provided the following
table, which identifies the minimum number of customer service employees needed on
the floor each hour of the day:
Time Period

Minimum number of employees

7 am - 8 am

15

8 am - 9 am

15

9 am - 10 am

15

10 am - 11 am

20

11 am - 12 pm

20

12 pm - 1 pm

20

1 pm - 2 pm

20

2 pm - 3 pm

20

3 pm - 4 pm

25

4 pm - 5 pm

25

5 pm - 6 pm

25

6 pm - 7 pm

20

7 pm - 8 pm

20

8 pm - 9 pm

15

9 pm - 10 pm

15

10 pm - 11 pm

15

Full-time employees at AMC work a 9 hour shift (8 hours of work plus a 1 hour
unpaid meal break) either from 7 am to 4 pm or from 2 pm to 11 pm.
o Workers on the 7-4 shift are assigned an hour-long lunch break at either
10 am, 11 am or 12 noon.
o Workers on the 2-11 shift are assigned an hour-long dinner break at either
5 pm, 6 pm or 7 pm.

Part-time employees work four consecutive hours per day and their shifts can
start any time between 7 am and 7 pm.

By corporate policy, which is consistent with Mexican labor law, the company limits
total part-time hours to 50% of the day's total hours, part-time hours plus full-time
hours worked.
Part-time employees earn $300 per day, and full-time employees earn $750 per day in
salary and benefits ($ = Moneda Nacional, ie, the Mexican peso).
2

Using Excel Solver, each student prepares an employee assignment schedule for
Acme Mexico City that addresses the following questions:
1. An optimal schedule for full-time and part-time customer service employees that
minimizes personnel costs.
2. A discussion of the process used to determine the schedule, to include a
discussion of all modelling assumptions and of qualitative factors not covered
by the model.
3. Provide your own best schedule by modifying the optimal schedule from Q1 and
explain/justify why yours is better than the original optimal solution. Be creative in
creating the best schedule, and criticize this approach from managerial
perspectives. Are you going to adopt the solution proposed? If not why? Any
other alternatives?
4. Now you have more information. We notice based on prior history, the full time
employee is two times more efficient than the part time employee. How does this
information affect the optimal schedule in Q1? Solve the Q1 again based on this
information.