Decision support for the crew scheduling problem in ship management

For decades decision support systems are an integral part of business information management systems and a wide range of Operations Research (OR) methods are applied. Many OR methods for solving the airline crew scheduling problem (ACSP) were developed in the last decades. In the maritime sector, the development and use of OR methods for the crew scheduling problem is less common than in the airline sector. The aim of this paper is to provide an insight into this important area in ship management and to formulate a mathematical model - the vessel crew scheduling problem (VCSP).