My sister is in charge of scheduling physicians for shifts and on call for a large hospital and she has a really hard time. She does it manually with the help of a spreadsheet. She engaged with some software company to help and after many hours of work she still uses the spreadsheet.

Part of the problem is that some senior physicians do whatever they want and aren't interested in playing fair. They'll call her the day before a holiday and tell her they're not coming in, and my sister is left trying to figure out the least shitty way to cover the gap.

See my link above for KHE. It also does nursing schedules which may help you.

Scheduling is one of these areas where the core problem is quite well-defined, but the devil is in the details - both static and dynamic. Bit like one module of ERP.

Static details include things like local labour laws, skill constraints, unions etc.

Dynamic details include things like allowing employees to state preferences, swap shifts (while respecting labour laws), call in sick etc. without having to reshuffle everything.

There probably are quite a few submarkets (geographies/industries/sizes) that don't have tools; whether you can make money is a different question.

Many small-medium businesses wouldn't want such a tool because it eliminates managerial leverage. I'm not being snide either. In many places I've worked the boss's tyrannical power over the schedule was a form of control.

See also the story of Staffjoy mentioned in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22583653) YC fellowship, they couldn't find a market, and shut down: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=staffjoy

Yup. Small businesses don't need auto-scheduling. Enterprises already have functional tools that are hard to displace (particularly due to internationalization, localization, and payroll needs). Mid-size businesses often need the customized deployments of enterprises, but don't have the budget.

By the way, thanks a lot for sharing your story and code back then, I learnt a lot from it.

I run a small business and we use WhenIWork to schedule our shifts. We couldn't be happier with the software, functionality, and customer support, although it's a tad pricey.

for small-medium companies managers are stressed or manipulative over this topic, some aid would help a lot yeah