The venue management problem: setting staffing levels, shifts and shift schedules at concession stands

Abstract

The aim of this research is to determine staffing requirements as well as shift scheduling, with the objective of maximizing the expected contribution from the venue. We specifically consider theaters where demand at concession stands is non-stationary, being largely dominated by the showtimes, the days of the week and the movie types. Determination of the number of workers and their shift in such facilities can be considered as a venue management problem. As one of the distinctive characteristics of our study, we maximize the expected contribution of venue operations while combining shift scheduling in a mathematical model. In addition to the objective function, shift scheduling differs from that in the standard literature, as shift beginning and end times are not restricted. Because of the highly variable demand in the venue management problem considered, flexible shifts are used, with flexible beginning and end times, as long as workers meet the specifications of the type to which they belong. We prove that the venue management problem under consideration is NP-complete. Under mild conditions, we show that the binary requirements of some of the variables in the model can be relaxed. Computational results of a case study are provided.