DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH

For safe and efficient control of flight operations, it is essential to schedule the available air traffic controllers as optimally as possible in order to monitor the various airspace sectors. Accso developed an optimizer for the automated creation of shift plans for the daily scheduling of air traffic controllers. The powerful optimization process accelerates workstation-related shift planning. 

What was the task? 

For the safe and efficient control of flight operations, it is essential to schedule the available air traffic controllers as optimally as possible in order to monitor the various airspace sectors. Accso has developed an optimizer for the automated creation of shift plans for the daily scheduling of air traffic controllers. The powerful optimization process accelerates workstation-related shift planning.

What was the challenge? 

The number of possible assignments for air traffic controllers to workstations is astronomically large. The calculation of a guaranteed optimal shift plan would therefore require many years of computing time, even with modern computer systems. For operations, however, an optimized shift plan is required within a minute. A practical procedure must therefore come as close to an optimal solution within this tight time frame. 

What did we do?

The developed layered plan optimizer is inspired by an industrial process (annealing) for material optimization. Virtual heating and slow cooling of a layer plan causes the cells of the layer plan to move. This process is comparable to the optimization of the arrangement of atoms in a glowing metal. As a result, a layer plan is created that is optimized with regard to several criteria.

Testing with actual planning data in a live environment has demonstrated that the automatically generated shift plans are created more rapidly than manual plans and are of comparable quality. The solution is already operational in certain areas and will be rolled out across the entire company in due course.  

How does this benefit the customer? 

“The introduction of a standardized system to support the daily scheduling of pilots is a challenging task for us. A core component of this system is the shift plan optimizer, which must be both highly performant and adaptable to the specific requirements of the individual branches. It is therefore a key success factor for the acceptance of the system in operation. Accso has designed and implemented an innovative, flexible and highly efficient solution based on the latest scientific findings and technologies, which has already been very well received by the shift planners.”