A Hybrid Approach for Solving Large Scale Crew Scheduling Problems

Abstract

We consider several strategies for computing optimal solutions to large scale crew scheduling problems. Provably optimal solutions for very large real instances of such problems were computed using a hybrid approach that integrates mathematical and constraint programming techniques. The declarative nature of the latter proved instrumen- tal when modeling complex problem restrictions and, particularly, in efficiently searching the very large space of feasible solutions. The code was tested on real problem instances, containing an excess of 1:8 x 109 entries, which were solved to optimality in an acceptable running time when executing on a typical desktop PC.KeywordsProblem InstanceColumn GenerationConstraint ProgrammingMaster ProblemColumn Generation ApproachThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.