Crew scheduling: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 20:32, 12 February 2011

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All of these issues need to be addressed in order to create a satisfactory solution for personnel and management of the organization. For the Crew member in a seniority based system schedules are descideddecided largely on workplace seniority. Those at the top of a seniority list are allowed some choices. As assignments are made and the remaining roster of personnel becomes fewer, managements' systems start to assign the remaining trips based on a weighting of the 4 previously mentioned variables, without any input from personnel.<br>

This does not allow the personnel to have any choice or voice in the schedules they receive. This lack of scheduling awareness until the end of each scheduling period is a major workforce issue and an employee [http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1997688,00.html morale problem], often creating a tenuous situation especially where a collective bargaining agreement is in place, and particularly at negotiation time. To address this issue, and to satisfy the growing voice of personnel to have a say in their scheules, in the 1970s the company SBS International, lead by Mr. Christian Boegner, created the concept of a Preferential Bidding System (PBS).

This was a new method of allowing personnel to create input data that factored in the calculations of the schedules, while still allowing management a level of control over critical business decisions. This has become a standard in the industry. The newest approach to PBS and crew scheduling takes advantage of the interaction possible via the web, which wasn't possible in the 1970s.<ref>http://www.crewingsolutions.com/sites/all/files/resources/SP-WhitePaperPBS.pdf</ref>

Crewmembers and management can interact with schedules and data in a real-time web interface. Status can be seen and acted upon as it develops and changes, rather than requesting or bidding for a schedule once, then waiting to see the outcome. Although that advance itself was revolutionary at the time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_bidding_system[Preferential bidding system|Mr. Boegner developed the mathematical algorithm to do so]], interactive live PBS crew scheduling is the next step. the internet and it's reach are starting to change crew scheduling within the large, global organizations that use it. These organizations are known to be slow moving and reluctant to adopt new technologies, however [http://www.crewingsolutions.com/content/resources-center Live Preferential Bidding Systems] are now becoming the crew scheduling system of choice.

<ref>http://www.carmensystems.com/research_development/articles/crtr0303.pdf "Solving the World's Largest