Airport staff scheduling : a large-scale real world application

We present a research and business project aimed at developing software for automated airport staff rostering. Industrial partner is a large international ground handling company, and pilot site is Zurich Airport. The monthly planning involves hundreds of shift types and thousands of employees with various skills, and features demand-driven rostering and shift bidding. After discussing the project’s planning context, we give insights into the solution approach which involves decomposition, integer programming and (meta-)heuristics, and show operational impacts and bottom-line benefits