Optimizing Workforce Planning in University Cleaning Services Using Integer Programming: A Cost-Reduction Approach

Zhaorui Wan, Jingchun Xu

2025

Abstract

Cleaner services in Malaysia is facing a large amount of challenges in managing their workforce. Workforce planning is a critical process for each organization which helps to determine which employees and what are the right type of positions at a given time. Workforce planning has been very essential in many fields and industries such as postal delivery industry, cleaners’ services. The main problem which is faced by the cleaning services industry is that there is no proper workforce planning from the management team. This paper is about how to improve the workforce planning in the cleaner services industry by using optimization to minimize the hiring cost. The main objective of this research is to minimize hiring cost in cleaner services in operation at a public university in Malaysia. The first step in doing this research is to build an optimization model that stated the current situation by integer programming approach. The data used in this research are collected by interviewing and from the company report to understand the current situation. The factors that affect the hiring cost are also identified based on their context in the organization. The last step in doing this research is to test the model by what-if analysis where the three what-if scenarios are used to evaluate the solutions obtained from the modified models. The finding shows that the proposed modified model can help the organization to identify how to allocate their resources better, hire to minimize the hiring cost, get better performance from the cleaner and finally improve their workforce planning. This research provides a base line for cleaning services management to apply in their daily operations to conduct effective and efficient workforce planning.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Wan Z. and Xu J. (2025). Optimizing Workforce Planning in University Cleaning Services Using Integer Programming: A Cost-Reduction Approach. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Engineering Management, Information Technology and Intelligence - Volume 1: EMITI; ISBN 978-989-758-792-4, SciTePress, pages 462-467. DOI: 10.5220/0014361200004718

in Bibtex Style

@conference{emiti25,
author={Zhaorui Wan and Jingchun Xu},
title={Optimizing Workforce Planning in University Cleaning Services Using Integer Programming: A Cost-Reduction Approach},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Engineering Management, Information Technology and Intelligence - Volume 1: EMITI},
year={2025},
pages={462-467},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0014361200004718},
isbn={978-989-758-792-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Engineering Management, Information Technology and Intelligence - Volume 1: EMITI
TI - Optimizing Workforce Planning in University Cleaning Services Using Integer Programming: A Cost-Reduction Approach
SN - 978-989-758-792-4
AU - Wan Z.
AU - Xu J.
PY - 2025
SP - 462
EP - 467
DO - 10.5220/0014361200004718
PB - SciTePress