IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orinte/v42y2012i4p352-364.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Improving Workforce Scheduling of Aircraft Line Maintenance at Sabena Technics

Author

Listed:
  • Jeroen Beliën

    (Center for Informatics, Modelling and Simulation, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium; Research Center for Operations Management, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium)

  • Brecht Cardoen

    (Operations and Technology Management Center, Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium; Research Center for Operations Management, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium)

  • Erik Demeulemeester

    (Research Center for Operations Management, Department of Decision Sciences and Information Management, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium)

Abstract

This paper presents our application of a visualization tool and optimization model based on mixed-integer linear programming to solve a workforce staffing and scheduling problem at Sabena Technics, a major aircraft maintenance company in Belgium. We used the software to generate many alternative, cost-efficient schedules and to analyze multiple scenarios. In several management meetings, stakeholders evaluated the schedules and raised concerns. We subsequently changed the model to successfully address their concerns. The model has resulted in considerable savings and a more efficient use of human resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeroen Beliën & Brecht Cardoen & Erik Demeulemeester, 2012. "Improving Workforce Scheduling of Aircraft Line Maintenance at Sabena Technics," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(4), pages 352-364, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:42:y:2012:i:4:p:352-364
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.1110.0585
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.1110.0585
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/inte.1110.0585?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. E. Rod Butchers & Paul R. Day & Andrew P. Goldie & Stephen Miller & Jeff A. Meyer & David M. Ryan & Amanda C. Scott & Chris A. Wallace, 2001. "Optimized Crew Scheduling at Air New Zealand," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 31(1), pages 30-56, February.
    2. Ernst, A. T. & Jiang, H. & Krishnamoorthy, M. & Sier, D., 2004. "Staff scheduling and rostering: A review of applications, methods and models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(1), pages 3-27, February.
    3. Cynthia Barnhart & Amy Cohn, 2004. "Airline Schedule Planning: Accomplishments and Opportunities," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 3-22, November.
    4. Jacques Desrosiers & Arielle Lasry & Daniel McInnis & Marius M. Solomon & François Soumis, 2000. "Air Transat Uses ALTITUDE to Manage Its Aircraft Routing, Crew Pairing, and Work Assignment," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 41-53, April.
    5. David Lesaint & Christos Voudouris & Nader Azarmi, 2000. "Dynamic Workforce Scheduling for British Telecommunications plc," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 30(1), pages 45-56, February.
    6. Belien, Jeroen & Demeulemeester, Erik & Cardoen, Brecht, 2010. "Integrated staffing and scheduling for an aircraft line maintenance problem," Working Papers 2010/23, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    7. Gang Yu & Michael Argüello & Gao Song & Sandra M. McCowan & Anna White, 2003. "A New Era for Crew Recovery at Continental Airlines," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 5-22, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hyun Jun Yang & Suk Jae Jeong & Sung Wook Yoon, 2020. "Enhancement for human resource management in the ULD build-up process of air-cargo terminal: a strategic linkage approach," Journal of Heuristics, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 301-333, April.
    2. Komarudin & Tim De Feyter & Marie-Anne Guerry & Greet Vanden Berghe, 2020. "The extended roster quality staffing problem: addressing roster quality variation within a staffing planning period," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 253-264, April.
    3. Sanja Petrovic, 2019. "“You have to get wet to learn how to swim” applied to bridging the gap between research into personnel scheduling and its implementation in practice," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 275(1), pages 161-179, April.
    4. De Bruecker, Philippe & Beliën, Jeroen & Van den Bergh, Jorne & Demeulemeester, Erik, 2018. "A three-stage mixed integer programming approach for optimizing the skill mix and training schedules for aircraft maintenance," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 267(2), pages 439-452.
    5. De Bruecker, Philippe & Van den Bergh, Jorne & Beliën, Jeroen & Demeulemeester, Erik, 2015. "A model enhancement heuristic for building robust aircraft maintenance personnel rosters with stochastic constraints," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(2), pages 661-673.
    6. Komarudin, & Guerry, Marie-Anne & De Feyter, Tim & Vanden Berghe, Greet, 2013. "The roster quality staffing problem – A methodology for improving the roster quality by modifying the personnel structure," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 230(3), pages 551-562.
    7. Qin, Yichen & Ng, Kam K.H., 2023. "Analysing the impact of collaborations between airlines and maintenance service company under MRO outsourcing mode: Perspective from airline's operations," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    8. Guopeng Song & Tamás Kis & Roel Leus, 2021. "Polyhedral Results and Branch-and-Cut for the Resource Loading Problem," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 105-119, January.
    9. Talla Nobibon, Fabrice & Leus, Roel & Nip, Kameng & Wang, Zhenbo, 2015. "Resource loading with time windows," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 244(2), pages 404-416.
    10. Dinis, Duarte & Barbosa-Póvoa, Ana & Teixeira, Ângelo Palos, 2019. "A supporting framework for maintenance capacity planning and scheduling: Development and application in the aircraft MRO industry," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 1-15.
    11. Machado, Marcio Cardoso & Gomes Eller Araújo, Michelle Aparecida & Soto Urbina, Ligia Maria & Macau, Flavio Romero, 2016. "A qualitative study of outsourced aeronautical maintenance: The case of Brazilian organizations," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 176-184.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maenhout, Broos & Vanhoucke, Mario, 2010. "A hybrid scatter search heuristic for personalized crew rostering in the airline industry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 206(1), pages 155-167, October.
    2. Cynthia Barnhart & Amy Cohn, 2004. "Airline Schedule Planning: Accomplishments and Opportunities," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 3-22, November.
    3. de Lange, Robert & Samoilovich, Ilya & van der Rhee, Bo, 2013. "Virtual queuing at airport security lanes," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 225(1), pages 153-165.
    4. Cynthia Barnhart & Peter Belobaba & Amedeo R. Odoni, 2003. "Applications of Operations Research in the Air Transport Industry," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(4), pages 368-391, November.
    5. S. Mirrazavi & Henri Beringer, 2007. "A web-based workforce management system for Sainsburys Supermarkets Ltd," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 155(1), pages 437-457, November.
    6. Sanja Petrovic, 2019. "“You have to get wet to learn how to swim” applied to bridging the gap between research into personnel scheduling and its implementation in practice," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 275(1), pages 161-179, April.
    7. Feng, Tao & Lusby, Richard M. & Zhang, Yongxiang & Tao, Siyu & Zhang, Bojian & Peng, Qiyuan, 2024. "A branch-and-price algorithm for integrating urban rail crew scheduling and rostering problems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    8. Chunhua Gao & Ellis Johnson & Barry Smith, 2009. "Integrated Airline Fleet and Crew Robust Planning," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(1), pages 2-16, February.
    9. S Eom & E Kim, 2006. "A survey of decision support system applications (1995–2001)," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 57(11), pages 1264-1278, November.
    10. David Rea & Craig Froehle & Suzanne Masterson & Brian Stettler & Gregory Fermann & Arthur Pancioli, 2021. "Unequal but Fair: Incorporating Distributive Justice in Operational Allocation Models," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(7), pages 2304-2320, July.
    11. Ellen Bockstal & Broos Maenhout, 2019. "A study on the impact of prioritising emergency department arrivals on the patient waiting time," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 589-614, December.
    12. Arpan Rijal & Marco Bijvank & Asvin Goel & René de Koster, 2021. "Workforce Scheduling with Order-Picking Assignments in Distribution Facilities," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(3), pages 725-746, May.
    13. Shan Lan & John-Paul Clarke & Cynthia Barnhart, 2006. "Planning for Robust Airline Operations: Optimizing Aircraft Routings and Flight Departure Times to Minimize Passenger Disruptions," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(1), pages 15-28, February.
    14. Esmaeilbeigi, Rasul & Mak-Hau, Vicky & Yearwood, John & Nguyen, Vivian, 2022. "The multiphase course timetabling problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 300(3), pages 1098-1119.
    15. Karsu, Özlem & Morton, Alec, 2015. "Inequity averse optimization in operational research," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 245(2), pages 343-359.
    16. Emir Demirović & Nysret Musliu & Felix Winter, 2019. "Modeling and solving staff scheduling with partial weighted maxSAT," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 275(1), pages 79-99, April.
    17. Jens Brunner & Jonathan Bard & Rainer Kolisch, 2009. "Flexible shift scheduling of physicians," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 285-305, September.
    18. Camila Ramos & Alejandro Cataldo & Juan–Carlos Ferrer, 2020. "Appointment and patient scheduling in chemotherapy: a case study in Chilean hospitals," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 286(1), pages 411-439, March.
    19. Melanie Erhard, 2021. "Flexible staffing of physicians with column generation," Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 212-252, March.
    20. Oliver Faust & Jochen Gönsch & Robert Klein, 2017. "Demand-Oriented Integrated Scheduling for Point-to-Point Airlines," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(1), pages 196-213, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:42:y:2012:i:4:p:352-364. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.