Nowadays, the vehicle and crew scheduling is a hard and widely studied Combinatorial Optimization problem. Several studies have shown that exact approaches for resolution of the above mentioned problem are prohibitive due to high computational cost involved. This paper describes a new approach for vehicle and crew scheduling without changeovers (the change of a vehicle of a driver are forbidden) based on a maximum covering problem formulation. Computational results with bus and crew scheduling problems from companies of Fortaleza, located in Northeast of Brazil, are presented and discussed. The results indicate the applicability of the proposed approach. Keywords: vehicle and crew scheduling problem, mixed integer programming, maximum covering problem. Abstract system in Fortaleza, a city which is located on Northeast of Brazil. The paper is composed of four more sections, described as follows. In the second section, basic concepts about VCSP are presented. In the third section, a new mathematical model or VCSP is presented. In the fourth section, the computational experiments with real instances are presented. Finally, in the fifth section, conclusions about the theme approached are made, being, as follows, presented the bibliographical references which gave support to the paper. Traditionally, the vehicle and crew scheduling is accomplished in a sequential way, so that the vehicles scheduling (Vehicle Scheduling Problem -VSP) is an initial stage, being completed by the crew scheduling (Crew Scheduling Problem -CSP). CSP is more constrained than VSP; therefore, it is not very intelligent to schedule vehicles without taking the crews into account, since they constitute the bottleneck of the process. It is also appropriate to highlight that in a great deal of the public transportation companies, especially in the developed countries, the costs with the crew are the most significant ones in the service offered. Thus, efforts must be made to minimize such costs, always taking into consideration the vehicles allocation, which is also a fundamental question in such process.
A new approach for vehicle and crew scheduling, where the change of a vehicle of a driver is forbidden, is based on a maximum covering problem formulation and implemented with data of companies of Fortaleza, in Brazil REF .
Using a Maximal Covering Approach for the Vehicle and Crew Scheduling: A Case of Study
Sistemas & Gestão
Sistemas & Gestão
Engineering