Solving a manpower scheduling problem for airline catering using metaheuristics

Sin C. Ho and Janny M.Y. Leung

European Journal of Operational Research, 2010, vol. 202, issue 3, 903-921

Abstract: We study a manpower scheduling problem with job time windows and job-skills compatibility constraints. This problem is motivated by airline catering operations, whereby airline meals and other supplies are delivered to aircrafts on the tarmac just before the flights take-off. Jobs (flights) must be serviced within a given time-window by a team consisting of a driver and loader. Each driver/loader has the skills to service some, but not all, of the airline/aircraft/configuration of the jobs. Given the jobs to be serviced and the roster of workers for each shift, the problem is to form teams and assign teams and start-times for the jobs, so as to service as many flights as possible. Only teams with the appropriate skills can be assigned to a flight. Workload balance among the teams is also a consideration. We present model formulations and investigate a tabu search heuristic and a simulated annealing heuristic approach to solve the problem. Computational experiments show that the tabu search approach outperforms the simulated annealing approach, and is capable of finding good solutions.

Keywords: OR; in; manpower; planning; Skill; compatibilities; Time; windows; Tabu; search; Simulated; annealing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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