Considering aging workforce characteristics in production scheduling: literature review and extended job shop modelling approach

As the proportion of older workers increases, considering their unique characteristics and needs in operations management has become critical, especially in manufacturing environments. Traditional production scheduling models usually assume a homogeneous workforce and neglect the diverse physical and cognitive abilities of older workers. This paper presents a systematic literature review to evaluate the state of research on age-inclusive production scheduling models. The results indicate that besides job rotation scheduling problems, production scheduling that considers the sequence of jobs at machines or workstations in connection with the age-inclusive assignment of workers has received little attention. To close this gap, we propose a dual resource-constraint job shop scheduling approach incorporating workers’ experience and age based on the results of the literature review and discuss future research opportunities