Application of Quantum Annealing to Nurse Scheduling Problem

Ikeda, Kazuki; Nakamura, Yuma; Humble, Travis S.

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-49172-3

Title: Application of Quantum Annealing to Nurse Scheduling Problem

Journal Article · Fri Sep 06 00:00:00 EDT 2019 · Scientific Reports

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49172-3· OSTI ID:1560436

^[1]; Nakamura, Yuma ^[2];

^[3]

Osaka Univ. (Japan)
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Quantum annealing is a promising heuristic method to solve combinatorial optimization problems, and efforts to quantify performance on real-world problems provide insights into how this approach may be best used in practice. We investigate the empirical performance of quantum annealing to solve the Nurse Scheduling Problem (NSP) with hard constraints using the D-Wave 2000Q quantum annealing device. NSP seeks the optimal assignment for a set of nurses to shifts under an accompanying set of constraints on schedule and personnel. After reducing NSP to a novel Ising-type Hamiltonian, we evaluate the solution quality obtained from the D-Wave 2000Q against the constraint requirements as well as the diversity of solutions. For the test problems explored here, our results indicate that quantum annealing recovers satisfying solutions for NSP and suggests the heuristic method is potentially achievable for practical use. Moreover, we observe that solution quality can be greatly improved through the use of reverse annealing, in which it is possible to refine returned results by using the annealing process a second time. We compare the performance of NSP using both forward and reverse annealing methods and describe how this approach might be used in practice.

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Research Organization:: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-00OR22725

OSTI ID:: 1560436

Journal Information:: Scientific Reports, Vol. 9, Issue 1; ISSN 2045-2322

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 36 works

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Cited By (2)

Foundation of quantum optimal transport and applications Ikeda, Kazuki Quantum Information Processing, Vol. 19, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-019-2519-8	journal	November 2019
Foundation of Quantum Optimal Transport and Applications Ikeda, Kazuki arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1906.09817	preprint	January 2019