Thank you very much, that was very helpful.

"Peter T" wrote:

Unless I'm missing something this looks pretty straightforward -
My understanding is:
between 0-4 people can work 11 hour shifts
unlimited number of people can work 8 hour shifts

type numbers in A1, A4, B1:F1 as follows
A1: 11
A4 8
B1:F1 0 to 4

paste these formulas in B2:B5
=$A$1*B1
=80-B2
=IF(MOD(B3,$A$4),INT(B3/$A$4)+1,B3/$A$4)
=$A$4*B4-B3

copy B1:B5 to B1:F5

you should end up with these in A1:F5

11 0 1 2 3 4
~ 0 11 22 33 44
~ 80 69 58 47 36
8 10 9 8 6 5
~ 0 3 6 1 4


row 5 shows wasted hours

The most efficient is 8x10,
Next most efficient is 11x3 + 8x6 giving just one wasted hour

Rearrange and with labels to suit

Regards,
Peter T

PS done in a hurry - pls double check I haven't made any obvious mistakes!


"William" wrote in message
...
I am trying to use Excel to determine my staffing needs for a given work
day.
Here is what I have for data:

80 hours of work needs to be done per day.
I have one shift that works 11 hours (this is total hours available to
work,
I already took out breaks, lunch, etc.), the maximum I can have on this
shift
in a day is 4 people.
I have another shift that works 8 hours (I already took out breaks, lunch,
etc.).

I would like to know how many staff I need on the 11 hour shift and how
many
on the 8 hour shift to do 80 hours of work per day.

I would also like to be able to change the 80 hours to whatever I want (as
the work increases) and have the formulas automatically recalculate (so I
don't have to change the 80 in formulas, etc.)

If it was one shift of 8 hours it would be obvious to me, I would need 10
people. But having these odd shifts of 11 hours and 8 hours and limited
people on the 11 hour shift is throwing me and don't know how to do it in
Excel as one formula or best way to break this down. I don't want to just
assume all 4 people will work 11 hours. I would like to be able to get to
the
data in multiple ways. For example, it would be nice if I could reduce the
11
hour shift to just 2 people, but then how many 8 hour shifters would I
need
to increase to cover the work.