This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Ovchinnikov, A. Articles by Milner, J. Search for Related Content

Spreadsheet Model Helps to Assign Medical Residents at the University of Vermont's College of Medicine

Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903
Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3E6
aovchinnikov{at}darden.virginia.edu
milner{at}rotman.utoronto.ca

This paper describes a spreadsheet model that MBA students enrolled in an MS course constructed to replace the manual method of assigning medical residents in radiology to on-call and emergency rotations at the University of Vermont's College of Medicine. Although it contains more than 10,000 variables, the model was easy to build and solve by practitioners who are "lightly educated" in OR/MS. Based on this group's work, we discuss an approach that end-user practitioners can take to create spreadsheet optimization models. We also provide several observations and argue that spreadsheet models can provide an alternative scheduling method for problems of a smaller scope. Despite the major advances in personnel-scheduling methodologies and software, manual scheduling is still the predominant method used for such smaller-scope problems.

Key Words: spreadsheet OR/MS; health-care operations; multiple-criteria decision making