A Decision Support System for Crew Planning in Passenger Transportation Using a Flexible Branch-and-Price Algorithm

This paper discusses a decision support system for airline and railway crew planning. The system is a state-of-the-art branch-and-price solver that is used for crew scheduling and crew rostering. We briefly discuss the mathematical background of the solver, of which most part is covered in the Operations Research literature. Crew scheduling is crew planning for one or a few days that results in crew duties or pairings, and crew rostering is crew planning for at least one week for individual crew members. Technical issues about the system and its implementation are covered in more detail, as well as several applications. In particular, we focus on a specific aircrew rostering application. The computational results contain an interesting comparison of results obtained with, on one hand, the approach in which crew scheduling is carried out before crew rostering, and, on the other hand, an approach in which these two planning problems are solved in an integrated manner. 5001-6182 Business 5201-5982 Business Science Library of Congress Classification (LCC) HD 30.23 Decision Support systems M Business Administration and Business Economics M 11 R 4 Production Management Transportation Systems Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) C 44 Statistical Decision Theory, Operations Research 85 A Business General 260 K 240 B Logistics Information Systems Management European Business Schools Library Group (EBSLG) 255 G Management Science, Operations Research Gemeenschappelijke Onderwerpsontsluiting (GOO) 85.00 Bedrijfskunde, Organisatiekunde: algemeen 85.34 85.20 Logistiek management Bestuurlijke informatie, informatieverzorging Classification GOO 85.03 Methoden en technieken, operations research Bedrijfskunde / Bedrijfseconomie Bedrijfsprocessen, logistiek, management informatiesystemen