Keywords
constraint programming, rota creation, fairness

Technologies
Java, Choco-Solver, JavaFX

There are many areas of work involving shift work for which work rotas need to be created. The creation of these work rotas is done either manually by hand or automated using applications. In both of these cases workers often feel unfairly treated with the shift pattern they have been assigned. This project uses constraint programming to explore the automatic creation of work rotas.
In order to take into account for peoples preferences, the system takes in staff preferences, regarding desired days off. These preferences are then handled, along with other constraints restricting the shifts, staff, days worked and requirements, by using constraints implemented with the Java Choco-Solver library, a library used for constraint programming.
The system focuses on fairness over time, attempting to treat staff fairly over a series of weeks. The research involving a questioner examining the impact of the schedules created with this tool could lay the ground work for a system which not only reduces the manual labor but allows improves peoples acceptance of the created work rotas schedules.