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Methodology for scheduling pre-board screening staff at the Vancouver International Airport

University of British Columbia

A scheduling methodology has been developed for the staffing of pre-board screening at the Vancouver International Airport. Pre-board screening is the process of x-raying hand baggage and checking passengers to ensure no prohibited items are carried onto an aircraft. At the Vancouver International Airport there are four screening locations and the demand fluctuates differently at each location. Given a day's departing flight schedule, for each 10-minute interval over the day, the methodology forecasts the passenger demand at each of the four pre-board screening locations, determines optimal staffing level to meet the service criteria of less than 10 percent of passengers spending more than 10 minutes in the system, then determines a staff shift schedule that will ensure there are sufficient staff in the airport to meet the minimum numbers. The methodology has been implemented using Excel spreadsheets and solves quickly. In the forecasting methodology, a distribution is applied to each departing flight to distribute the departing passengers over the time period preceding the departure time. The results agree well with available data. The scheduling period is divided into 10-minute intervals and for the passenger demand in each interval at each screening location, a staffing level is determined using queuing theory. Finally, a shift schedule is developed that will cover the aggregated demand of the four screening locations using linear programming. It is possible for screening agents to move from one screening location to another during the shift making satisfying the aggregate demand feasible.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-10-17

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/13968

Business Administration

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace