Argumentation for Explainable Workforce Optimisation (with Appendix)

TL;DR

This paper presents an argumentation-based approach to workforce management that enhances explainability and adaptability, demonstrated through a user study showing improved problem-solving speed and accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel argumentation framework for workforce optimization that provides faithful explanations and handles changes during execution.

Findings

User study shows faster problem solving

Explanations improve stakeholder understanding

Framework accommodates changes effectively

Abstract

Workforce management is a complex problem involving the optimisation of the makespan and travel distance required for a team of operators to complete a set of jobs, using a set of instruments. A crucial challenge in workforce management is accommodating changes at execution time so that explanations are provided to all stakeholders involved. Here, we show that, by understanding workforce management as abstract argumentation in an industrial application, we can accommodate change and obtain faithful explanations. We show, with a user study, that our tool and explanations lead to faster and more accurate problem solving than conventional manual approaches.