1. Crew Planning Optimization Mastering the planning objectives
Demo: Carmen Crew Pairing
Demo: Carmen Crew Rostering
Summary

2. Optimization

3. Optimization Optimization
Better optimization means more room for increased stability and more business opportunities.
Predictability
Flexibility
Holistic view
Best of breed optimization always pays off
Predictability (Target Mastery). Know what you get.
Flexibility (Change Power). You can always change your mind and change the targets or refine your process.
Avoid sub-optimization (Power Integration).

4. Products concepts Optimization Stability Process changes Flexibility
Control
Speed
Satisfied crew
Target Mastery
Change Power
Power Integration
Savings
Simulation capability
Good forecasting
Optimization shall give you all this. We have divided all these properties in three groups…
No sub-optimization

5. Target Mastery Optimization Control and predictability of results
Know what you get
Create scenarios
Create low cost solutions
Create stable solutions
Investigate trade-offs
Each additional percentage saved is a substantial amount of money.
Example on trade offs: 1) Roster quality vs. stability 2) Cost vs. service level (e.g. language qualification 3) Aircraft stability vs. crew efficiency
The scenarios can of course be used to pick out the best scenario out of many approaches with slightly different focus (more or less focus on preferences, fairness, service level, etc). But they can also be used as a backup plan, that can be utilised if something happens.
Stability: Relevant buffers, production easy to move between pairings, coordinate crew and fleet, efficient standby patterns, try to plan for standby aircrafts, etc.

6. Change Power Optimization
The ability to quickly implement new business rules and processes
You can always change your mind
New agreements, new bases, revised timetables, etc
Decrease the lead-time of change (of both solution properties and the process itself)
Consistent legality, quality and cost constraints in all systems
Of course the overall objective remains quite the same (e.g. transporting passengers in a reliable but cost efficient way), but the detailed properties of the perfect planning changes all the time.
New agreements are negotiated, new bases opened, maintenance sites closed, seat configurations changed, new fleet, training rules changes, timetables revised, etc
Potential process change: Less published details on the roster content. Increased/ decreased frequency of publication. Man flights according to passenger prognosis. Etc, etc. It is very important that a new process can be tried and evaluated easily.
All systems in the operation shall have consistent views on what is expensive, legal good/ bad quality, etc. Otherwise each process step will be contra-productive.

7. Power Integration Optimization
Simultaneous optimization and integration of different resources
Don’t sub-optimize
Always use best of breed applications
Always regard all necessary resources
Always have access to relevant data
There are two way toward integration. One is to integrate all processes in one big system covering everything. Another is to open up the systems so that data from other systems easily can be accessed for more detailed calculations.
Carmen is doing both. For our core products (crew, fleet and yield) we are integrating the different sub-systems more and more. But this is happening gradually, and our customers shouldn’t have to wait for that. And it is anyway very hard to take such a big complete system in production in one step. Therefore we have introduced the concept with Carmen Connect that makes it possible to connect any system to the Carmen products without a lot of messy special development.
This gives you the possibility to always use best of breed applications. We hope, of course, that these applications shall be Carmen’s product where we have matching products. But you shouldn’t buy a Carmen product because you already bought another one of our products, you shall buy it because it is the best available product to connect to your other systems.

8. Optimization: Set partitioning
Select the a number of pairings, such that all legs are covered and the total cost is minimised. This is a very hard optimization problem.
Rosters or crew pairings
min C1 C2 C3 C4 C5
leg = 1
leg = 1
leg = 1
leg = 1
leg = 1
min cx
Ax=b
Flight or pairing

9. Optimization
130
112 98
340
115
110
107
332
128
112 92 58
390
128
110 94 82
414
128
112 95 84
419
120 75
101 89 65
450
???
Optimize
The Optimization methods allows a global approach where the total cost/quality is important.
(Individual extreme cases can of course still be avoided.)

10. Carmen Rave Optimization The same legality tool in all products
Short lead-times to introduce new rules
Very important when performing simulations
Clients estimate that Rave gives more than 2% additional savings
RULE max_duty =
%duty% <= 10:00;
REMARK “Maximal duty”;
END

11. Optimization Lufthansa Air France Core product British Airways
Legality
Quality
Costs
Reports
Interfaces
Colours
etc...
Air France
Core product
Deutsche Bahn
British Airways
Optimization methods
GUI
Modelling tools like Rave and the report generator
Basic functionality

12. Optimization Benefits
Reduce costs
Increase stability
Easy to change business rules and processes
Control planning trade-off effects (e.g. cost, stability, crew influence)
Detailed simulations to support informed decisions

13. Mastering the planning objectives

14. Carmen Integrated Operations Control
Product Overview
Carmen Integrated Operations Control
Carmen Passenger Tracking
Carmen Fleet Assignment
Carmen Tail Assignment
Carmen Aircraft Tracking
Anonymous fleet assignment
Aircraft Routings
Carmen Crew Pairing
Carmen Crew Rostering
Carmen Roster Maintenance
Carmen Crew Tracking
Anonymous pairings
Rosters
Carmen Time Table Manager
Carmen Rave (Global Modelling Language)
Carmen Crew Communicator

15. The Planning Objectives
Improved utilization of resources
Increased operational stability
Measurability and control
Increased service level to the end consumer (passenger, cargo)

16. Improved utilization of resources
Planning Objectives
Improved utilization of resources
Reduce crew size
Reduce crew costs (e.g. hotel, per diem, positioning, etc)
Allow crew to influence their rosters

17. Increased operational stability
Planning Objectives
Increased operational stability
Start planning later
Plan crew to minimise delays (e.g. crew synchronisation, buffers)
Synchronise crew and fleet (minimize critical aircraft changes)

18. Measurability and control
Planning Objectives
Measurability and control
Simulate effects from changes (new union agreements, changed crew base structure, fleet restructuring, etc)
Cost control of the entire process
Reduce complexity in planning process (e.g. remove lose-lose rules, put crew in control over quality aspects)
Increase predictability in result (by making quality, cost and stability aspects independent of individual interpretations)

19. Integration and Simulation
Integration within planning
Simulations to support long-term decisions
Simulations as a part of the planning process
Simulations to explain results

20. Integration within crew planning
Integration and Simulation
Integration within crew planning
Regard roster pre-assignments when creating pairings
Allow pairings to be moved between bases in rostering
Create preliminary pairings and rosters to find future bottlenecks
Connect the planning more with the post-planning processes
Evaluate pairings and rosters returned from day of operations

21. Simulations to support long-term decisions
Integration and Simulation
Simulations to support long-term decisions
The potential in renegotiating the crew agreements
The consequence of detailed changes
The consequence of changing the base distribution
The consequence of a new flight schedule, network or a new fleet structure
The consequence of changing the payment structure

22. Simulations as part of the planning process
Integration and Simulation
Simulations as part of the planning process
Always produce plans for
Real plans
Lowest possible cost
Industrial rules benchmarking
Crew requests status report
Easier to perform relevant reporting to upper management
Increase the cost awareness in the planning department
Promotes planners to explore the new technology

23. Published Key Figures Integration and Simulation Cost Max PBS
No quality and no PBS
Industrial regulations
JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC JAN FEB

24. Explaining results Integration and Simulation
“How can the planning be efficient when I have two blank days, and three deadheads in my roster this month?"
“The meaning with any change is to trick us into working more!“
“Why are we having less block time per crew than airline X?“

25. Carmen Crew Rostering
Minimizing crew costs and achieving stability

26. Carmen Crew Pairing – Short Demo
Create a solution (both seasonal and dated)
Create many scenarios
Analyse the result
Manual operations
Always legality control
Apply seasonal planning to a new time period
Change legality

27. Carmen Crew Pairing – Start the optimizer
Open flights
Select flights and start an optimization session in the background

28. Carmen Crew Pairing – Start the optimizer
Total solution cost for each improved solution
It is always possible to monitor the optimization sessions, and to analyze available sub solutions

29. Carmen Crew Pairing – Monitor the solutions
Key figures are always available both from the monitoring system and from the pairing editor

30. Carmen Crew Pairing – Rolling-out
Dated pairings
Some pairings contains cancelled flights
Roll out weekly pairing solution
Additional open flights
It is possible to apply an already available standard pairing to a new period.
And some pairings becomes illegal

31. Carmen Crew Pairing – Repair solution
The system can repair a a standard solution applied on a new period

32. Carmen Crew Pairing – Directly to dated
It is also possible to perform dated planning directly from open flights

33. Carmen Crew Pairing – Legality control
Illegal pairing
Generic control panel for legality, quality and cost
The system makes sure that no illegal pairings are created by the optimization or in the pairing editor

34. Adding a rule with Carmen Rave
Carmen Crew Pairing – Changing legality
Adding a rule with Carmen Rave
RULE max_duty =
%duty% <= 10:00;
REMARK “Maximal duty”;
END

35. Carmen Crew Pairing – Changing legality
The system immediately respects the new rule
Generic control panel for legality, quality and cost
A Rave programmer creates the rule
Adding a new legality rule to the system

36. Carmen Crew Rostering
Lowering crew costs and high quality of life

37. Carmen Crew Rostering – Short Demo
Manual editing of rosters
Look for resource bottlenecks
Create a solution
Analysis reports
Changing legality
Create scenarios
Improve an already existing solution

38. Carmen Crew Rostering Pre-planned time off
Production from previous planning period
Time-off request
Ground duty
Previous planning periods
Open production (pairings and standby blocks)
Select crew members and open production (e.g. crew pairings and standby blocks)

39. Carmen Crew Rostering – Manual interaction
It is always possible to edit details in a solution, at any stage.

40. Carmen Crew Rostering – Manual interaction
Assigning internal meetings to administrative pilots.

41. Carmen Crew Rostering – Manual interaction
Copying parts of a roster.

42. Crew Rostering – Analyse the problem
Forecast report
Critical resource situation
Run production forecast report.

43. Crew Rostering – Start the optimizer
Cover production
Stability
Requests
Fairness
Set trade-off settings and start optimizer

44. Controlling Trade-off effects
Crew Rostering – Trade-offs
Controlling Trade-off effects
Productivity (few crew members, low hotel and allowance cost, etc)
Stability (rest buffers on strategic duty, efficient stand-by patterns, etc)
Fairness (fair distribution of free weekends, attractive layovers, etc)
Individual preferences / crew requests (late check in, short pairings, specific time off, etc)
Service level, long-term stability, high revenue flights, etc

45. Carmen Crew Rostering – Monitor the solutions
Comparing quality of long-term duty distribution, preferences and fairness
Total solution cost for each improved solution
It is always possible to monitor each scenario while it is being further improved.
All open production covered

46. Carmen Crew Rostering – Monitor the solutions
Any reports can be created with Rave Publisher. (The example shows a roster overview and crew requests.)

47. Carmen Crew Rostering – Improving or scenarios
It is always possible to improve a scenario even further, e.g. by changing some parameters.

48. Carmen Crew Rostering – Improving or scenarios
It is always possible to improve a scenario even further, e.g. by changing some parameters.

49. Summary More efficient crew planning
Easy to change objectives and processes
Cost and stability control
Simulations and scenarios
Crew requests