Scheduling Algorithm to Minimize Required Crew Size

Abstract

Railway companies produce crew schedules when they revise their train timetables. Currently, these schedules are produced manually by experts. However, this manual task is time-consuming. It is therefore necessary to develop a system that supports crew scheduling using an automated generation algorithm. We propose an automated crew scheduling algorithm based on mathematical optimization to minimize the number of crew required. The results of a computational experiment using real data from a Japanese railway line confirm that the proposed algorithm can quickly generate efficient crew schedules that optimize crew size.