Michael Snyder

Puckboard: Optimization of USAF Crew Schedules

Personnel scheduling is a well-known challenge across a wide variety of domains. Our work on Puckboard demonstrates a real-world application of personnel scheduling to flight crews in the U.S. Air Force. We utilize both linear & constraint optimization techniques to recommend air-crew based on factors such as legality, currency, and training history. Additionally, we encode a number of domain specific constraints such as flying time limits and instructor waivers. Using real personnel, mission, & training data we provide optimal crew sets to the scheduler for review along with justification statements for explainability. As the application is used by schedulers their assignment decisions are recorded alongside the recommendations of our algorithms, allowing for both refinement of the constraints and user workflow adjustments to ensure optimal and robust schedules.