Staff rostering for the station personnel of a railway company

This paper presents a case study commissioned by the Spanish railway carrier Ferrocariles Espanoles de Via Estrecha for the annual rostering of work schedules for station personnel. A mixed rostering process is used. The first part of the process is carried out manually with the aid of a spreadsheet and Visual Basic, and consists of designing an initial graphic with 4-week patterns for each station, assigning those patterns in a rotating schedule over the year and factoring in vacation time. The second part consists of assigning relief shifts to cover those shifts left vacant in such a way as to minimize the distance travelled by personnel from other stations brought in for relief shift duty. To that end, basic programmes are designed using binary programming and a 4-week time frame. The results obtained are a clear improvement on the system previously used at FEVE and the company has decided to implement the model.