A simheuristic approach for robust scheduling of airport turnaround teams

ABSTRACTThe problem of developing robust daily schedules for the teams turning around aircraft at airports has recently been approached through an efficient combination of project scheduling and vehicle routing models, and solved jointly by constraint programming and mixed integer programming solvers, organized in a matheuristic approach based on large neighborhood search. Therein, robustness is achieved through optimally allocating time windows to tasks, as well as allocating slack times to the routes to be followed by each team throughout their working shift. We enhance that approach by integrating discrete event simulation within a simheuristic scheme, whereby results from simulation provide constructive feedback to improve the overall robustness of the plan. This is achieved as a trade-off between the interests of each separate turnaround service provider and that of the airport as a whole. Numerical experiments show the applicability of the developed approach as a decision support mechanism at any airport.