Using Integer Programming for Airport Service Planning in Staff Scheduling

W H Ip ,Sai Ho Chung ,G.t.s Ho

doi:10.5772/9716

W H Ip , Sai Ho Chung + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5772/9716

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Abstract

Reliability and safety in flight is extremely necessary and that depend on the adoption of proper maintenance system. Therefore, it is essential for aircraft maintenance companies to perform the manpower scheduling efficiently. One of the objectives of this paper is to provide an Integer Programming approach to determine the optimal solutions to aircraft maintenance planning and scheduling and hence the planning and scheduling processes can become more efficient and effective. Another objective is to develop a set of computational schedules for maintenance manpower to cover all scheduled flights. In this paper, a sequential methodology consisting of 3 stages is proposed. They are initial maintenance demand schedule, the maintenance pairing and the maintenance group(s) assignment. Since scheduling would split up into different stages, different mathematical techniques have been adopted to cater for their own problem characteristics. Microsoft Excel would be used. Results from the first stage and second stage would be inputted into integer programming model using Microsoft Excel Solver to find the optimal solution. Also, Microsoft Excel VBA is used for devising a scheduling system in order to reduce the manual process and provide a user friendly interface. For the results, all can be obtained optimal solution and the computation time is reasonable and acceptable. Besides, the comparison of the peak time and non-peak time is discussed.

Highlights

Nowadays, since air transport becomes more and more popular in the world, airline industry has been increasing rapidly on the demand of the aircraft service. Hansen (2004) claimed that from the year 1996 to 2016, the worldwide air traffic is expected to grow to unexpected levels
To assign flights to the maintenance groups according to the time constraints and still fulfill the aircraft licenses requirement, Microsoft Excel Solver would be used for solving the integer programming
This paper proposed an optimization approach to improve the manual maintenance scheduling process

Summary

Introduction

Since air transport becomes more and more popular in the world, airline industry has been increasing rapidly on the demand of the aircraft service. Hansen (2004) claimed that from the year 1996 to 2016, the worldwide air traffic is expected to grow to unexpected levels. The annual leave, public holiday and special restrictions such as special shift pattern, shift not assigned to particular staff, fixed holiday on a particular weekday are very important and substantial for the satisfaction of the staff. All these considerations make the roster generation more complex and complicated especially for the large number of staff. The studied company China Aircraft Service Limited (CASL)

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