Decentralized Ground Staff Scheduling



AbstractTypically, ground staff scheduling is centrally planned for each terminal in an
airport. The advantage of this is that the staff is efficiently
utilized, but a disadvantage is that staff spends considerable
time walking between stands. In this paper a decentralized
approach for ground staff scheduling is investigated. The airport
terminal is divided into zones, where each zone consists of a set
of stands geographically next to each other. Staff is assigned to
work in only one zone and the staff scheduling is planned
decentralized for each zone. The advantage of this approach is
that the staff work in a smaller area of the terminal and thus
spends less time walking between stands. When planning
decentralized the allocation of stands to flights influences the
staff scheduling since the workload in a zone depends on which
flights are allocated to stands in the zone. Hence solving the
problem depends on the actual stand allocation but also on the
number of zones and the layout of these. A mathematical model of
the problem is proposed, which integrates the stand allocation and
the staff scheduling. A heuristic solution method is developed and
applied on a real case from British Airways, London Heathrow
Airport. This study shows that decentralization generally
increases the number of staff needed compared to centralized
planning. The case study also shows that there is a trade-off
between the extra staff needed and the quality of the stand
allocation. Furthermore, the robustness of solutions with respect
to disruptions deteriorates with the number of zones. In practice,
the "cost" of introducing decentralization should therefore be
weighted against the benefits gained.
KeywordsDecentralization, Ground Staff Scheduling, Stand allocation, Zoning, Simulated Annealing
TypeTechnical report
Year2002    pp. 25
PublisherIMM-Technical Report
ISBN / ISSN19
Electronic version(s)[ps]
BibTeX data [bibtex]
IMM Group(s)Operations Research