Staff rostering at a large international airport

The human resource planning and scheduling system described in this paper assists in the rostering of approximately 500 staff for the airport operations of a major international airline at one of the busiest international airports. The system rosters airline ground staff over a monthly planning horizon so that the work load is evenly distributed among the staff and idle time, the main productivity measure, is minimised. The rosters are subject to a large number of rules designed to ensure reasonable working conditions and service standards. The system then allocates individual tasks to the staff for any particular day, and effectively manages, in real-time, disruptions that occur due to aircraft delays and unplanned staff absences on the day of operations. The system is also designed to reduce the number of staff needed to run the present rostering system. In this paper, we provide a description of the overall system and an algorithm for solving the rostering problem associated with the system.