Generating, scheduling and rostering of shift crew-duties: Applications at the Hong Kong International Airport

In the context of manpower planning, goal programming (GP) is extremely useful for generating shift duties of fixed length. A fixed-length duty consists of a fixed number of contiguous hours of work in a day, with a meal/rest break somewhere preferably around the middle of these working hours. It is such properties that enable the straightforward, yet flexible GP modeling. We propose GP models for an integrated problem of crew duties assignment, for baggage services section staff at the Hong Kong International Airport. The problem is solved via decomposition into its duties generating phase – a GP planner, followed by its GP scheduling and rostering phase. The results can be adopted as a good crew schedule in the sense that it is both feasible, satisfying various work conditions, and ‘optimal’ in minimizing idle shifts.