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IS480 Team wiki: 2012T1 Bumblebee Project Overview

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Project Description X Factor Stakeholders Motivation Deliverables and Scope

Project Description

Project Description

Singapore Airport Terminal Services (SATS) is the leading provider of the gateway services and food solutions in the region. It has a staff of 800 to handle more than 35 airlines. Every year, there are two major airline flight schedule change - summer (April) and winter (November). Each change can be a drastic one and has great impact on staff roster. One of SATS’s goals for its staff roster is to meet all its airlines’ requirements. However, there are many uncertainties such as staff members falling sick, staff resigning and flight delay, that cause the roster planned to be ineffective. Thus, Duty Manager in SATS often has to make last minute changes to the rosters and incur costs such as Staff Recall Cost, Over-Time cost and Meal Allowance Compensation (MAC). To help improve the efficiency involving various costs and consequences of the planned staff roster, our project aims to create a Staff Deployment Simulation Software (SDSS) which will first deploy staff based on flight schedule, flight requirements, staff records and staff roster and then simulate the roster plan by taking into account all the various uncertainties and forecast the various costs that the management would have to incur. Understanding the cost and consequences of a given roster, SATS would then be able to make necessary adjustments to avoid high expenses to the company. The diagram below explains the flow of the software.

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To predict the uncertainties, we will take in the mean and standard deviation of the listed simulation parameters in diagram above(MC Rate, Flight Delay Rate, Staff Resign Rate, etc). Having those values, our software will then generate a normal distribution of each uncertainty. After such, we will be applying the uncertainties at the planned roster plan such as removing staff from the roster plan if he/she is taking MC. The software will also try to mimic the actions of Duty Manager who does the necessary adjustment to the staff roster to fulfill the airlines requirements i.e. to imitate human decision making process to come out with an optimal staff roster.

At the end of the day, our software will generate a management report which will reveal the cost and consequences of implementation of a given roster. The output given will be Total Staff Working Hours, Flight Demand Coverage, Meal Allowance Compensation (MAC), Over Time (OT) Cost, OT hours, Staff Utilization Rate, Unproductive Hours, Recall Cost and Recall Hours. Understanding the cost and consequences of a given roster, SATS would then be able to make necessary adjustment to avoid high expenses and thus, increase cost savings to the company.

X Factor

X Factor

Scheduling Simulation Logic

One of the most challenging part of our project will be the creation of simulation logic.
Uncertainties such as flight delays, sudden leaves and employees taking MCs resulting a constant need in changing the employees roster plan. The simulation software is required to consider all these uncertainties as simulation parameters and will apply them onto the roster plan.

On top of that, system needs to do scheduling and mimic actions done by Duty Manager as closely as possible, which is to re-roster affected staff based on the uncertainties. The challenging part comes in when we have to write algorithms that can decide on whether to recall a staff to fulfill a flight's demand or to OT a staff when there is lack of manpower. This is just one of the scenarios in which our system needs to cater to.

Moreover, there are many constraints such as number of available and trained employees, number of working hours, airline and flight requirements that the software needs to take into account. These result to a challenging simulation logic.

To understand the complexity and the abundance in probabilities of scheduling, try to solve this:
We want to color countries on a map so that no two adjacent areas have the same color. How many colors do you need at the most? Map Coloring Teaser
Courtesy of IS103 Computational Thinking

Stakeholders

Stakeholders

The Bees

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Sponsors

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Motivation

Motivation

There are 2 main motivations for working on this project:
1. The industry that we are working with - it's aviation industry, in which we have minimum exposure in school! We would love to explore and understand more about what aviation industry is and how IT can help to make a difference in it!
2. Our software can make a significant difference as it will be implemented in SATS' daily operation. =D

Deliverables and Scope

Deliverables and Scope

Deliverables
A working Java Desktop Application with a backend Microsoft Access Database (.mdb) with the following features completed and usable:
• User can import data for simulation records from CSV files. They include flight schedule, staff records, flight requirements and roster plan.
• User can input simulation parameters: MC rates, Staff Resignation Rate, New Staff Rate.
• User can use the system to schedule staff roster and measure the effectiveness of the current roster plan based on imported data. Staff will be allocated to flight based on their working hours, qualifications and other real life factors.
• User can simulate the roster plan by applying simulation parameters as listed above. User then can simulate staff deployment by mimicking Duty Manager Activities such as calling back staff, extending OT hour, combining staff for different airlines and many others.
• User can customize airline special staff requirements based on the airline, aircraft type or number of flights within a specific period of time.
• User can save and view the past simulation results. The results can be exported as a PDF report file.

Scope
These are features within the scope of our project:
• Deployable a Java Desktop Application with will full features as discussed in the deliverables section.
• Accurate, smart and effective algorithms for staff deployment function.
• Simulation results are credible and realistic.
• GUI is user-friendly and easy to use.