The article is devoted to the global problem of driver shortages in road freight transportation. One promising way to mitigate this labour shortage is to enhance the logistics of order fulfilment for the fleet of trucks and the drivers who operate them. This study proposes to discard all restrictions on the organization of work for drivers, except those established by European Union Regulation 561/2006, which affect fatigue and road safety. The object of the study is the work schedule of drivers while performing a given volume of intercity cargo transportation. The subject of the study is the influence of methods of work organization and driver interaction on achieving the minimum required number of drivers, provided that the given volume of transportation orders is completed on time and in accordance with EU Regulation 561/2006. In particular, it is proposed to abandon the assignment of drivers to vehicles and introduce a variable method, with the beginning and end of each driver's shift coinciding with the points of loading and unloading of goods. In this case, the complexity of the active schedule development methodology increases, as it is necessary to consider the organizational interactions of drivers on routes. Drivers are given the opportunity to transfer vehicles to each other and perform combined tasks. However, at the same time, they can rest only at the end of the shift without violating regulations 561/2006. Thus, the drivers' working time is used more efficiently. The task of building schedules is, in this case, NP-complex and its exact and guaranteed solution is not always available. However, the study used a modified method of ordering mixed disjunctive graphs to find such a solution. One of the modifications is that the field of possible solutions is limited by operations on the auxiliary graph used in the methodology. The structure of the auxiliary graph depends on the number of drivers who can be involved in transportation. Thus, the chromatic number of the auxiliary graph should not be greater than the specified maximum number of drivers. Another modification concerns the preparation of the content and the list of arcs of the main graph. The arcs are formed taking into account the early possible beginnings and late completions of transportation. It became possible to develop a heuristic algorithm for ordering the graph and obtain a guaranteed optimum with these changes. The algorithm was applied to a test model of transportation performance with different numbers of drivers and different options for limiting their work. It was demonstrated that under different conditions, it is possible to achieve varying efficiencies of order fulfilment, to use the minimum number of personnel. Thanks to the proposed method, it is possible to reduce the required number of drivers by at least 7% compared to the current organization of their work, that is, without a variable method, fixed points of stay of drivers. The practical value of the proposed methodology and the corresponding algorithm lies in their ability to be successfully applied in the activities of road freight carriers, thereby partially addressing the problem of labour shortage. The results demonstrate the possibility of organizing the work and rest of a limited number of hired drivers in such a way that they will be able to complete 24% more orders in the same amount of time, while ensuring the maximum permitted duration of their truck driving and the minimum duration of shift and inter-shift rest.
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