OPSEARCH, VOL. 42, No. 3, 2005 0030-3887/00$ 5.00+0.00 © Operational Research Society of India Constraint Satisfaction Methods for Solving the Staff Transfer Problem Sriyankar Acharyya Vivekananda College, Thakurpukur, Calcutta - 700 063, INDIA Amitava Bagchi Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Joka, D H Rd, Calcutta- 700 I04, INDIA Abstract The Staff Transfer Problem is concerned with the assignment of transfer postings to employees in large organizations. Staff transfers are an important issue in Human Resource Management in countries like India and China that have many large public sector undertakings. The Staff Transfer Problem can be viewed as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem, and methods such as Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithms, Satisfiability (GSAT), and Conflict Directed Backjumping can all be employed to solve randomly generated problem instances. Computer experiments indicate that Simulated Annealing is the best method of solution. GSAT with a tabu list yields solutions of good quality but is unable to solve large instances. Genetic Algorithms is also good, but it takes much more time than Simulated Annealing. Conflict Directed Backjumping, a deterministic search technique, is markedly inferior to the other methods. Thus for solving the Staff Transfer Problem, randomized approaches appear to be superior to deterministic ones. Keywords Human Resource Management, Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithms, Satisfiability, GSAT, Conflict Directed Backjumping 1. Introduction A transfer is a lateral movement of an employee in an organization not involving a change in rank. In many large organizations that maintain offices and work sites at multiple locations, it is customary to transfer a subset of employees at periodic intervals from one office or work site to another. Examples of such organizations are the armed forces, government departments, public sector undertakings, commercial banks and construction firms. Transfers play a major role in human resource flow in organizations, and the satisfactory assignment of transfer postings to employees is an important issue in Human Resource Management [Beer et al 1985, Dessler 1997]. A good transfer policy helps an organization to increase motivation and productivity of employees through avoidance of monotony, to