EGR 252 MATLAB Final Project

Scheduling for Library Help Desk

Background

In the last decades, personnel scheduling problems has been studied widely. The motivation of
the study is mainly for the cost cutting for labor in industries. However, personnel scheduling in
academic institutions especially for library help desk scheduling is quite different. Universities and
colleges often offer part time positions and work hours for students as part of financial aid
package. Cutting labor cost and satisfying students’ needs become both important in staffing and
scheduling decision. When creating work schedules, student’s preferences (e.g. the flexible work
hours, working with their class schedule and weekly work hour limitation by school policy) need
to take into account. This project is to develop the modular program using MATLAB computer
language to schedule student workers duty for reference help desk of ORU library.

Project scope
The reference help desk has different open hours for different periods, which may include spring
semester, spring break, summer time, fall semester and fall break. We will only develop the
software to fill student workers into the open hours donated as ‘0’ in the tables below. ‘99’
represents closed hours for the help desk. Table 1 is for spring semester and Table 2 is for spring
break.

Table 1: Semester (File name: helpDeskSemester. xlsx)

Dr. Pavel Navitski, Engineering

School
 Table 2: Break (File name: helpDeskBreak.xlsx)

There are 10 student workers signing up for working on the help desk. Each student has their
own time table in which available hour is ‘0’ and unavailable hour is ‘99’. Table 3 and 4 are two
students’ time tables.

Table 3: Time table of 4th student(File name: a4. xlsx)

Dr. Pavel Navitski, Engineering

School
 Table 4: Time table of 7th student(File name: a7. xlsx)

Rules for scheduling

1. Each student is allowed to work up to 12 hours a week
2. The first priority is to fill up the help desk open hours with student workers’ ID numbers.
3. Second priority is to assign work hours to each student as equitably as possible.

Suggested steps
1. Assign hours for Monday first and then repeat its procedures for Tuesday, Wednesday
through Sunday.
2. For each day, search from top to bottom for a block for three consecutive 0’s (3 hours) for
both help desk schedule and each student’s schedule. Assign hours to the student if
certain conditions are satisfied.
3. Repeat step 2 for two consecutive 0’s (2 hours).
4. Repeat step 2 for one 0’s (1 hour).

Expected results
1. For spring semester, create and save an excel file in your hard drive for help desk schedule
with all ‘0’s replaced by students’ IDs.
2. For spring semester, create and save 10 excel files in your hard drive for 10 student
workers’ schedules. In each file, assigned work hours are filled with student’s ID numbers.
3. For spring break, create and save an excel file for help desk schedule with all ‘0’s replaced
by students’ IDs.
4. For spring break, create and save 10 excel files for 10 student workers’ schedules. In each
file, assigned work hours are filled with student’s ID numbers.
5. From the above, there are total 22 files to be created and saved.

Dr. Pavel Navitski, Engineering

School
 Files to be provided

helpDeskSemester.xlsx - help desk schedule for spring semester

helpDeskBreak.xlsx - help desk schedule for spring break
a1.xlsx, a2.xlsx through a10.xlsx- 10 excel files for 10 student workers’ time tables

Project submission deadline:

. Project demonstration dates: .

Assessment

 Points and weighting: The project is assigned 100 points and takes 25% of final grade.
 Points break down:
Demonstration (individually): 20 points for 5 questions to be answered.
WPA submission: 4 points
Specification, Reusability, Readability, Efficiency: 66 points
 Report (Individually): 10 points
This is a short report (less than three pages). In the report you should descript the structure
of your modular program and address the following questions:
1) How many functions you have used in the program and what are their names for each
function and main script?
2) What task does each function and the main script accomplish?
3) What are the relationships among the various functions and the main script. You may use
a block diagram to show this.
 Group setting: Maximum group size of 4.
 Project demonstration dates: . Demonstration is mandatory for
each student. 20 points will be deducted for those who are absent from the
demonstration. There is no make-up of the demonstration unless you are sick with a
doctor’s or nurse’s note.
 Your programs must be working ones by the demonstration. The programs you show on
the demonstration are final. Instructor will not give advising comments, just grade them.

 Submission (INDIVIDUALLY):
1. All m-files including functions
2. 22 excel files that your program creates and stores
3. Report
 Key Program Assessment (KPA) Assessment: Submit all m-files to KPA individually.
This part takes 4% of final grade.
 Assessment Criterion: For the assessments of specifications, readability, reusability,
efficiency, the details can be found in assessment table at D2L.

Dr. Pavel Navitski, Engineering

School