During the last decades, freight transportation experienced a worldwide boom. At the same time, competition increased considerably, such that efficient cost structures are indispensable for any market player. One of the main challenges a transportation company faces is the efficient employment of its personnel in operations, commonly referred to as crew scheduling.
In this book the author presents solution approaches to large-scale crew scheduling. Firstly, the implementation of state-of-the-art operations research methods for a setting at a major European freight railway carrier is presented. Secondly, the author discusses acceleration techniques that make the developed algorithms applicable even in short-term contexts. While the analysis is based on European freight railway settings, the gained insights also apply to other (crew) scheduling contexts.
Potential readership includes scholars and graduate students who are interested in the fields of crew scheduling and column generation as well as practitioners from transportation companies looking for new planning approaches.
About the authors
Dr. Silke Jütte is a professor of quantitative methods at the IUBH University of Applied Sciences in Bad Honnef. Between 2003 and 2005, she has been working as an Operations Manager for Deutsche Post Consult GmbH, where she developed and optimized processes at the DHL parcel delivery machines. Afterwards, Dr. Jütte worked as a research assistant at the University of Cologne, where she did her Ph.D. in 2012 in the field of supply chain management. Her research topics include railway crew scheduling and layout planning for renewable energies. Between 2012 and 2016, Dr. Jütte has been working as a software engineer and project manager at a consultancy in Cologne. During this time, she implemented decision support systems for solving quantitative tasks in the field of logistics.
