Case Studies in Planning Crew Members

CREWS is a software product for planning and managing the work of rail-staff, which provides solutions to one of the core problems that railway companies face today – effective management of resources. This paper reports some results of a long-term development work in the application of both Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research techniques to the planning and managing of staff (drivers, guards, and station personnel). The paper presents case studies emerging from the application of CREWS, both to railway and to subway companies. CREWS has grown to be a strong and mature product that provides decision-support in the task of planning the daily work of more than 20,000 staff members across Europe. CREWS-based systems are in routine use in the Dutch Railways, the Norwegian State Railways, the Finnish Railways, the Danish State Railways, the Suburban trains of Copenhagen, and the