Airline Workforce Scheduling Based on Multi-agent Systems

This study addresses employee’s scheduling problems of an airline company who are assigned to customer service at an airport. The problem can be defined as a dynamic scheduling problem that includes uncertainties and unexpected environmental changes. Therefore, this paper reports an agent-based simulation model that implements the workforce scheduling problem including features such as personnel skills, preferences, and certain constraints imposed by the airline. Besides the workforce scheduling problem, the proposed approach also integrates the personnel transportation problem, focused on the welfare of the employees upon certain shift conditions defined by the company. The integration of both problems seeks to offer a holistic solution, given the close relationship of both problems. By using agent-based modelling, the proposed approach allows facing the problem complexity, whilst making possible to quickly react to unexpected changes and events which is not possible to achieve with traditional optimization methods.