Duty Scheduler

In September 2003, CREWS was upgraded with capabilities to support activities based on work load profiles.

The traditional application of CREWS has been to cover the work of crew members, whose tasks are mainly based in trips - they move in space while performing the work.

In this new update, the amount of work to be covered is defined by a curve - a work load profile - that connects points in a time scale, defining the amount of work needed at each instant.

Work load profiles are used in several domains to define the work needs, such as railway stations, airports, hospitals, call centers, and security forces.

This CREWS upgrade is currently being applied to planning the work of the tollbooth operators of BRISA (the National Lease for Motorway Concession in Portugal), and for planning the work of station personnel, administrative staff, sales personnel, and workers at repair shops at DSB S-tog (the suburban trains of Copenhagen). Some characteristics of the new CREWS upgrade include:

Full compatibility with other CREWS modules
Graphical representation
Work load characterisation for different types of activities
Multiple activity support
User-definable time granularity
Adequate planning operations for work loads
User pre-defined duties
Visual representation of the covered work load (load satisfied by planned duties)



		Duty Scheduler The Duty Scheduler produces daily duties (sequences of tasks that can be done by a crew member with certain skills, at a certain frequency). Duties may either be from the home depot to the home depot or may spend one or more days outside the home depot. The Duty Scheduler works with weekday frequencies (for example, Monday to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), and year periods (for example, Summer, Winter, Easter, or a specific interval between two arbitrary days). Main features Enables manual scheduling and rescheduling Enables automatic scheduling and rescheduling Provides full integration of scheduling and rescheduling modes Takes into account station resources (meals in restaurants, sleeping in dormitories, etc.) Considers user-defined types of tasks (both trips and tasks within stations) Considers equipment knowledge, task knowledge, and road knowledge Considers transfer times between tasks Considers duty briefing and debriefing times Handles different types of duties in the same schedule Allows the segmentation of tasks Provides automatic and/or manual generation of positioning trips Takes labour rules in consideration (both soft and hard) while scheduling and rescheduling Shows the violations existing in a schedule
		Click to enlarge CREWS upgraded to cover work load profiles In September 2003, CREWS was upgraded with capabilities to support activities based on work load profiles. The traditional application of CREWS has been to cover the work of crew members, whose tasks are mainly based in trips - they move in space while performing the work. In this new update, the amount of work to be covered is defined by a curve - a work load profile - that connects points in a time scale, defining the amount of work needed at each instant. Work load profiles are used in several domains to define the work needs, such as railway stations, airports, hospitals, call centers, and security forces. This CREWS upgrade is currently being applied to planning the work of the tollbooth operators of BRISA (the National Lease for Motorway Concession in Portugal), and for planning the work of station personnel, administrative staff, sales personnel, and workers at repair shops at DSB S-tog (the suburban trains of Copenhagen). Some characteristics of the new CREWS upgrade include: Full compatibility with other CREWS modules Graphical representation Work load characterisation for different types of activities Multiple activity support User-definable time granularity Adequate planning operations for work loads User pre-defined duties Visual representation of the covered work load (load satisfied by planned duties) Click to enlarge