Assigning a review month, algorithm question

Ok put your thinking caps on!



I've got a file with the following keys...

Location

Contract #

Item Number



What I need to do is assign a review month to each contract in such a manner that approximately 1/12
the locations totals items are reviewed each month.



I've thought of a brute-force type method.

1) Get totals grouped by location, contract

2) Figure 1/12 the location's total items

3) Add contracts for a location to a given month till you get close to the number in step 2



But I was curious if anybody had a more elegant method?



Note I'm dealing with 150,000 contacts containing 1.5 million items at 118 locations. Some locations
have 50,000+ plus, some < 100.



I've also looked at randomly assigning contracts to the review month. That's pretty easy to do, and
it's not to bad but there are discrepancies in the # of items reviewed each much since there's some
contracts could have 10 items and others 100s or 1000s.



Thanks!



Charles Wilt

Software Engineer

CINTAS Corporation - IT 92B

513.701.1307

wiltc@xxxxxxxxxx <mailto:wiltc@xxxxxxxxxx>




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