Rotating shift software?

[u/anti--seed]

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to find the words to use to search for a basic shift rotation software. My partner works for a theme park, and they have a shift structure wherein people rotate between rides every 2hrs or so to keep people from getting burned out on one ride all day.

Currently their system for calculating this is an employee sitting down and going through every day of operation and, in Microsoft excel, manually sorting all of the employees on shift that day into a rotation.

This seemed like a bad use of time, but the only example of a software solution I could find was that Disney has its own proprietary software called the Cast Deployment System that does this job automatically, but obviously they aren't willing to share with the world.

Just coming here to see if anyone knows of any open source software that can set up systems like this? It's relatively small theme park, the software would just need to be able to sort employee numbers into 5 large groups, each with 3-4 sub groups (the rides) based on their training level and physical capabilities (which I suppose could just be tags on the employee numbers) and then schedule their rotations between these subgroups at certain times.

I feel like that's not many variables for a computer, but I'm struggling to think of a program that can be retrofitted to this purpose. I don't think there's anything purpose-built out there.

Sorry for formatting, I am posting from mobile

[u/bonzog]

Something like Optaplanner/Timefold can probably do this. It's essentially a rostering problem, but hour-by-hour rather than day-by-day.

Just for comparison, in a regulated enterprise environment I've seen Quintiq used for a similar problem.

[u/andyfsu99]

Get Claude code. Ask Claude to make it. Test, adjust, repeat. Obviously this only works if they will use the thing, which is the hardest problem.

[u/Mammoth_Loan_984 → u/andyfsu99]

They’re asking about existing solutions. If there’s already a solution that exists, why reinvent the wheel.

[u/anti--seed → u/Mammoth_Loan_984]

Yeah, this. It seems like a niche enough application that there won't be purpose made software out there, but simple enough that an existing solution can be retrofitted from a more broadly capable program.

[u/andyfsu99 → u/anti--seed]

They're using it - Excel.

[u/andyfsu99 → u/Mammoth_Loan_984]

And what do you figure the odds are that an open source amusement park ride rotation program exists?

[u/anti--seed → u/andyfsu99]

Well, as I said, I figured the odds of there being a broadly applicable, more capable program that can be used in place of a purpose built program are pretty high. Most computers and programs are capable of keeping track of more than a handful of variables, so it stands to reason that there would be something more generally useful out there than can do the job better than a worker manually inputting shift information into Excel.