Tuesday, 09 April, 2019

Wednesday, 10 April, 2019

Marcel Sol

Nicolan Rhoades

In recent years, Manpower Planning has become increasingly demanding due to its growing complexity. As a result, we received many requests from our customers to support them plan their workforce and improve efficiency and Total Cost of Delivery.

Therefore, we developed a smart tool that helps not only to analyze, forecast and optimize short- and long-term resource plans, but also provides intuitive solutions and is fun to work with. The cloud-based Manpower Planning solution replaces the error-prone excel files most planners still use today. It is a central and fully transparent platform that enables performance tracking, optimization, collaboration and guided working. We show how the features create a customized and individual planning environment for our customers and support them in their strategic and operational decisions. 

Bio Franziska is co-founder of WePlan – a software services company which has been founded last year as a spin-off of M2P Consulting.

WePlan offers a cloud-based solution for long-term workforce planning which has been developed over the past years to support especially airline clients with the increasingly complex task of Manpower Planning of air crews.

Franziska is based in Frankfurt, Germany and has been working as a consultant in the aviation industry since more than 5 years. She has deep knowledge and extensive experience in the field of airline operations. Her projects comprise crew management with a strong focus on Manpower Planning and crew cost optimization as well as process digitalization for a number of significant airlines and airports in Europe, North-America and the Middle East.

11:10

Jeju Air

11:20

Air France - KLM - Transavia France

11:30

American Airlines

Delta Air Lines

11:50

Deutche Lufthansa AG

IndoGo Airlines

13:15

The Boeing Company - Gold

13:30

AD Opt - Gold

Arcos - Gold

14:00

Sabre - Gold

Earlier this year, The Boeing Company introduced the 777X, which will become a complete game changer in the twin aisle market. In comparison to the current 777, this aircraft will offer greater range, higher fuel efficiency, more seats, and a more comfortable cabin, while also introducing the largest engine on a commercial airliner and an all-new 4^th generation composite wing with folding wing tips. The 777X also incorporates many breakthroughs in flight deck technology that will alleviate the workload on flight crews and enable same fleet flying with the 777 and 787.

This presentation will serve as an overview of the 777X and will offer a glimpse as to how airlines will be able to leverage these state-of-the-art technologies to open new growth opportunities.

Bio: Leon Poon is currently the Regional Director for Flight Deck & Crew Analysis at Boeing. In this role, Leon provides expertise to internal and external customers on the costs of flight crews to airlines and how they can leverage the value of a true Boeing family of aircraft to streamline their operations. Prior to joining Boeing in 2014, Leon held several positions at Qantas, and was previously a 777 and 747 pilot at Cathay Pacific.

Bio: Robbie Moss is currently a Flight Crew Cost Specialist at Boeing in the Airline Financial & Economic Analysis team. In this role, Robbie supports the development of flight crew cost analyses for internal and external customers. Prior to this role, Robbie completed a 2-year rotational program at Boeing, where he was exposed to finance, strategy, supply chain, and marketing roles.

In this presentation AGIFORS Crew attendees will get to:
• Learn about airline operations and crew tracking dynamics
• Understand evolution of airline operations, and the requirements of digitization
• Learn about using situational awareness in airline operations and crew tracking
• Learn how leading airlines are redefining their entire operations now
• Understand the benefits of a digital airline operations and crew tracking platform

Bio While working and visiting 112 airline OCC's in Europe, Americas, Africa, Middle-East and Asia Daniel always meets the same situation: non-integrated IT systems, paper, XLS, reactionary decision making, human interfaces. Whether legacy airlines, LCC, regional carrier, cargo or charter airlines, they’re all face the same challenges and requirements: Decision Making Quality, Process Automation, Disruption Management, Collaborative Decision Making, Costs and OTP. Daniel helps airlines Redefining Airline Operations.
As Vice President and Head of Global Sales for Airline Operations he is responsible for global sales and business development of the brand new airline operations digital platform "iFlight NEO".
Daniel created the OPS 2020 industry event which brings together global airlines and is dedicated to the global Airline Operations and Crew Management Community. http://ops2020.ibsplc.com/
Daniel has more than 25 years of experience spanning over the logistics industry (e.g. courier, express, parcel, air cargo, airport ground handling, freight forwarder, cargo carriers, airlines) and has been traveling more than one and a half million miles, in order to meet with industry experts and customers from the air cargo industry and airline business IT solutions industry.

Flight delays and disruptions reduce airline profits and cause inconvenience for passengers. Delays might occur because of multiple reasons that are usually outside of an airline control such as changes in weather conditions and unexpected aircraft failures. Delays in one part of the network might also propagate and cause delays in other parts of the network. Even though some delays are impossible to eliminate, it is possible to create more robust flight and crew schedules. One of the approaches that allow to achieve this is delay simulation. Simulation models can be calibrated by using historical delay information and can provide insights into delay reasons and costs. We investigate such simulation approaches for measuring robustness of existing flight schedules, identifying routes that are most prone to delays and analysing how crew pairings can be modified in order to create more robust solutions that do not cause significant increase of operational costs.

Bio: Olga is an Optimisation Developer at Merlot Aero Limited. She is experienced in operations research and software development. Olga holds a PhD in Engineering Science from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

In a growing aviation industry with a strong forecasted crew shortage, crew satisfaction is becoming more and more important. Investing in IT solutions is probably an obvious thing to do but isn’t necessarily the best solution to increase your crew satisfaction.  

Bio Myrthe: Myrthe has a passion for Aviation. After receiving her bachelor degree in business administration at the ‘The Hague University in the Netherlands, she started her career in 2007 working for KLM. She fulfilled the position of Roster optimization analyst and continued in the crew planning area as manpower planner. She left the crew topic for a moment to discover Revenue Management in the Air France headquarters in Paris and finished in the E-commerce domain. 1.5 year ago she broadened her scope from 1 to multiple airline but back in the Crew topic, working as a senior consultant for Lufthansa Systems Airline Consulting.

Bio Stefan: After finishing his bachelor degree in business informatics Stefan joined Jeppesen as an IT business analyst and was responsible for Crew Paring und Rostering Solutions. He worked for customers like Deutsche Bahn and Air Berlin before he left the company in 2017. Searching for new challenges he joined Lufthansa Systems Airline consulting to extend his knowledge about Crew Solutions and the related business processes. Currently working for Lufthansa in the area of Bidding as for external European customers, Stefan tries to identify trends which will affect the Crew landscape in future

SAS operates a fleet of 158 aircraft whereof 58 are operated on a ACMI contract by external operators. As one part of the work to optimize total resources in all SAS operations and lower cost for production is using knowledge, experience and system support to improve productivity and robustness in all parts of the planning process. We will look into the planning process in general and the creation of crew pairings in particular and how to benefit by systems and people capabilities.

Bio Martin Hoffman
Martin has wide experience from various key positions within SAS Operations since 1997. He has been COO for Long Haul Operations, Value Stream Owner for the Plan to Execution process, Head of Crew Planning and lastly responsible for Operational Planning Optimization within SAS Group Operations.
Martin holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and an MBA in International Aviation from Concordia University.

Bio Mårten Ahlstedt
Mårten has held numerous positions within SAS Crew Planning since joining SAS in 2011. Engaged by the challenges within the crew planning field and operations research, Mårten now has the position as Head of Crew Optimization.
Mårten holds a Master of Science in Communication and Transport Engineering from Linköping University, Sweden

Thursday, 11 April, 2019

Roster Change Impact Analysis

Anthony Carville - Rainmaker Business Technologies

Virtuous Cycles

Nicolas Rhoads - AeroMexico

10:00

10:15

Travelliance - Gold

10:15

10:30

AIMS - Silver

10:30

11:00

Coffee break

11:00

11:15

2E - Silver

11:15

11:30

Lufthansa System - Silver

11:30

11:45

Merlot.aero - Silver

11:45

12:00

NAVBLUE, an Airbus Company

13:00

13:15

GE Aviation Digital

This session will review the results of three projects conducted by GE Aviation Digital across multiple airlines to solve crew-related operational problems by applying analytics. We will explore the determination of appropriate crew standby levels; this work included daily prediction of standby demand to accommodate crew sickness and uncovered flights. The second project identifies the root cause of crew-related delays at a station and the analysis to determine how to eliminate those delays. And finally, we will dig into the process utilizing historical flight data to assess the robustness of crew pairings and infer specific station and time buffers for pairing generation.

Solving the Nightmare of Crew Scheduling

For over 20 years, ARCOS has worked with leading utility partners throughout North America to help respond, restore, and report during both blue and grey skies. When approached by an innovative major airline in 2017, our SaaS company learned that there are more similarities than differences across utility, airline, and other critical infrastructure industries.

ARCOS’s Callout Trip Management solution (ARCOS AscendTM) has evolved to help airlines solve their toughest flight crew trip coverage challenges, automating the process of filling open trips, eliminating the hours spent picking up an old fashioned phone, and decreasing the number of cancelled and delayed flights annually.

Bio Punam Shah is a business and technology professional with more than fourteen years of experience across multiple industries. Her expertise resides in addressing business challenges identified through client reviews, industry trends, and reports via technology solutions, partners and internal cross functional teams. Punam Shah is the National Account Manager for Aviation with ARCOS, a SaaS company that solves complex resource management issues for airlines and other industries. ARCOS has helped critical infrastructure companies reduce or eliminate union grievances, get the right resources faster, and improve response and restoration times for both daily operations and emergency events. 

14:30

14:40

Apm Technology

Friday, 12 April, 2019

09:00

09:10

ELP Aviation Inc.

09:10

09:20

Hitit Computer Services

09:20

09:30

IBS Software

09:30

09:40

Laminaar Aviation

09:40

09:50

M2P Consulting GmbH

09:50

10:00

Rainmaker Business Technologies

As MEX airport is getting more congested year by year, the need of a robust and coordinated planning between Operations, Crew and Commercial 

Bio Joined Aeromexico 7 years ago, working all my professional life in the airline industry, since I was IT developer for crew planning until I joined the crew planning team from the business and analytics perspective. 

11:00

11:10 

AeroMexico

11:10

11:20 

PSA Airlines

11:20

11:30 

Cathay Pacific

Last year M2P conducted a Resource Management Study at which many AGIFORS Participants participated. In course of the study, also 16 selected Heads of Crew Planning from 12 countries shared their’ insight-views of issues in Crew Management. The study further shares benchmarks and trends in Crew Management. The focus is set on Crew Productivity, Crew Management Processes, Crew Management Organizations, and the IT-Infrastructure supporting the departments’ activities. During this years’s AGIFORS we will share the major findings in all four categories. Topics cover crew productivity barriers, strategies for reserve planning, organizational benchmarks, Crew demands and IT system support.

Bio Marina is a Manager at M2P's Frankfurt office and has been with M2P since 2014. She is leading the Operations Management Practice which includes Operational excellence, Planning and optimization and Resource Management. Her experience with M2P includes extensive work with Airlines worldwide in different operational departments. Marina is particularly experienced in working with companies on Resource Management, Collective Bargaining, Business Process Optimization and Change Management. She holds a master's degree in Industrial Engineering with focus on Traffic Management and Aviation. 

All airlines have some concept of operational robustness built into to their crew pairings. It might mean minimizing the number of aircraft changes or how close one can plan to the FDP limit. Common for most of these approaches are that they are typically based on anecdotal feedback from operations or tribal knowledge. In this talk we’ll review a few examples of current practices and point out some of the challenges or missed opportunities. Additionally we’ll look at some ideas for making the process more analytical and data driven, as well as using historical data directly when optimizing the pairings.

Bio Tomas Gustafsson is currently Product Manager for Analytics and Optimization, within Boeing Global Services' Crew & Ops portfolios. These portfolios cover a full airline crew management suite as well tactical planning to operations for aircraft and schedule. Tomas has been working withe these products for more than 20 years, with the last 15 in various management positions. He started as a research intern in Optimization and has since then worked with research, development, tech sales, business consulting, client installation projects and more. Tomas university background is mainly in Optimization and Analytics and this has typically been the focus in any of his positions to date.

13:30

13:40

Qatar Airways

13:40

13:50

Scandinavian Airlines

13:50

14:00

Viva AeroBus

Airlines having multi base operations across various countries have always been troubled with the problem of keeping their crew together for the entire length of trip while still maintaining the manpower limitations and costs minimal. Although there are various restrictions that can be placed in the optimization system to try to achieve these goals, recently we have tried techniques for reducing the number of different bases, number of different pairing types, or number of pairings covering a set of flight legs within our optimization framework.

We intend to provide overview of the mathematical complexity while keeping the business aspect of the problem in the highlight. The talk will share initial test results and discuss further efforts that would enable us to achieve better crew friendly rosters right from the pairing level while not compromising on costs.

Bio Senior Operations Research Analyst and Developer at Sabre Polska sp. z. o.o , responsible for design and development of optimization solutions and products for airline industry problems like crew scheduling problem, pairing generation and crew recovery problem. MSc. in Mathematics, graduated from AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland. Areas of interest are also machine learning and image processing.

After rosters are built by our optimizers, scheduling agents still have a few days to edit them before official publications of the rosters. We initiated a study to explore how we could limit the number of editions by changing the rosters obtained out of the optimizers. To do so, we trained a machine learning model which would predict the probability for a roster to be edited by an agent. We then implemented this predictive model directly in the column generator of our optimizer to filter out low potential variables.

Bio 

Christophe Menager is an Operations Research Engineer for Cabin Crew Scheduling at the Air France Operations Research Department.

Bio Thibault Corneloup is project manager for Cabin Crew Scheduling at the Air France Operations Research Department.