Labour scheduling at an airport refuelling installation

• Published in: The Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 50; no. 3; pp. 211 - 218
• Main Authors: Alvarez-Valdes, R, Crespo, E, Tamarit, J M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Taylor & Francis 01.03.1999; Macmillan Press; Palgrave Macmillan UK; Palgrave; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Airports; Algorithms; Applied sciences; Business and Management; Case-oriented Paper; Case-Oriented Papers; Exact sciences and technology; Heuristic; Heuristics; Human resource management; Labor demand; labour scheduling; Management; Operational research and scientific management; Operational research. Management science; Operations research; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Personal computers; Refueling; Rotation; Scheduling; Scheduling, sequencing; Searches; Software packages; Studies; Tabu search; Workforce; Working hours; heuristics; labour scheduling; tabu search; Assignment; Tabu search; Airport; Work; Scheduling; Implementation; Refueling
• DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2600693
• ISSN: 0160-5682

We have developed an automatic assignment procedure for labour scheduling at a continously operating airport refuelling installation. Different types of workers are subject to different conditions on the shifts they can do (morning, evening or night), shift lengths, days-off, holidays, terms of contract and working hours. The scheduling process is carried out on a weekly basis, but there are mid-term and long-term conditions and objectives which link each week with the preceding and following weeks. Our package uses firstly a tabu search algorithm to find the best schemes of shifts/days-off to be used to cover the requirements. Secondly, an assignment problem is solved to match the schemes with available workers. Finally, the starting and finishing times for each working day are determined for each worker. The system has been designed to run on a personal computer and gives good quality solutions in very short computing times.