The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

October 1999

Scheduling Concepts (Con’t from page 7)

The solution approach that I used was to create a database

table with a field for the member names and fields for each of

the duties. The duties were speaker, evaluator, timer, toastmas-

ter, and chief evaluator. The BUSY field would be set to True

once the person was assigned a duty or would be out for that

meeting. The dates of the last time that person had the duty

were entered for each duty. Then, I indexed the table one each

duty for “BUSY = .F.”. In this case, it is indexed on SPEAKER.

The people who have not been speakers for the longest time will

be at the top of the table. They get scheduled for speaker and

the dates in the SPEAKER field get changed to the date of the

meeting and the BUSY field gets changed to True for them.

Then, it is on to the next duty.

See how easy that was?

In a second FoxPro application, I helped a client address a

queuing problem involving the scheduling of candidates and

assessors in an assessment center. The problem was that this

consulting company needed to test a number of employee

candidates for promotion. Each candidate is evaluated by

assessors as they complete four “assessment center exer-

cises”, which included performing a variety of “staged” or

simulated situations.

The first scheduling issue is how to maximize an assessor’s

time. The easiest, is to have all the candidates come in first

thing in the morning and wait until an assessment room or area

is free. The problem with this approach is that the candidates

are spending a lot of unnecessary time waiting. This is how the

Army scheduled people when I was on active duty. We were

told to “hurry-up and wait”. A better approach is to have an

algorithm that focuses on giving a candidate priority once they

start the first process and then they can complete all the

exercises as quickly as possible. Once that is accomplished

the program can look at what time each candidate started the

first process and tell them to get there 15 minutes early. This

approach works well until the end of the day. At the end of the

day there are not enough candidates in the queue to keep the

assessment centers busy. So, there wi!l be periods of down

time for the assessment centers. This can be fixed by getting

the last three candidates to start their first process earlier.

Having the last three candidates spend a little more time is the

simplest way to keep the assessment centers busy.

Conclusion

Now that you are comfortable with the basic concepts in

(Con’t, next column)

Job Op

Ret 88064

I am a technical recruiting specialist with Headway Technology

Resources in Newport Beach. Through a general internet

search, I found your name and email address. A very exciting

client of mine is looking for a Visual FoxPro (ver 6.0) program-

mer. The following is a list of information for this position:

- Customizing ERP Software

- Accounting knowledge required I Manufacturing helpful

- Company is located in Orange County

- =Min. 2-3 years experience requested

This company has developed software for the manufactunng

industry. Their clients request customization of the purchased

software. Please let me know if you possibly know anyone that

might be interested in a position as a VFP programmer. Thank

you for your time.

Sue Webster

(949) 260-9406, SWebster@headwaycorp.com

Scheduling Concepts (Con’t from adj. column)

scheduling, you are ready to take them to the next level, the

real world. You can now use “Container Theory” to help UPS

schedule the best way to fill their trucks and airplanes. And

while your at it, you can use “Network Theory” to schedule the

route for their trucks. Lastly, you can use “Queuing Theory” to

schedule their employee shifts.

You can also combine these concepts into sophisticated

approaches to problems. I think the best examples of this are

the MRP (Materials Requirement Planning) systems for

manufacturering, which utilize all three of the above concepts.

These MRP systems have evolved from letting the purchasing

department know what to order and the shop floor what to build

to managing the total organization. In my estimation they

represent one of mankind’s greatest achievements.

[Ed. Note: Joe Pecukonis is an independent consultant and

member of the Rocky Mountain FoxPro user group. He special-

izes in both Integer programming and Linear programming with

FoxPro. This includes creating scheduling software including

manufacturing MRP systems and scientific uses for FoxPro.

His email address is “JoePec@aol.com” and his home page is

http://mwmbers.aol.com/joepec/index.htm.]

Join

LA Fox

Page 8