Optimization of Ground Service Equipment Scheduling in Airport Operations
Research Problem
Aircraft turnaround requires many ground-service activities to be completed within a short period, including baggage and cargo handling, catering, cleaning, servicing, and other aircraft-support tasks.
These activities share limited ground service equipment (GSE), vehicles, and personnel, and many tasks can only start after preceding activities have been completed. Equipment must also travel through a congested apron environment between successive jobs.
Poor coordination can therefore increase turnaround time, create equipment conflicts, and propagate delays to aircraft departure operations.
Contributions
Our research develops integrated resource-allocation, scheduling, and routing models for aircraft turnaround operations.
Key contributions include:
- Optimization models for assigning ground vehicles and equipment to turnaround tasks
- Integrated scheduling and routing approaches that account for task precedence, service requirements, travel times, and operational deadlines
- Mesoscopic models that represent the interaction between multiple turnaround processes and equipment movements
- Vehicle-routing and scheduling methods for baggage and cargo transport operations
- Integration of data-driven service-time estimates and process information into optimization models
- Development of models suitable for increasingly automated and autonomous ground-service operations
Research Funding
- National Research Foundation Singapore
Total Environment for Next-Gen Airport Management Experimentation Platform (TEN-X)
Overall Project Award: SGD 6,920,853
SUTD Work Package: SGD 1,158,307