15 ms·

Well this is crying out for a high tech solution. Paper holiday chart as a service. For a fixed monthly fee of $10 per employee I will send them an annual holid

Well this is crying out for a high tech solution. Paper holiday chart as a service. For a fixed monthly fee of $10 per employee I will send them an annual holiday chart they can put on their wall. There is the premium version which comes with little coloured stickers.

quickthrower2 9y ago
"American Airlines' pilot scheduling system..." Sounds like they have the high tech, but it has a bug. They could fix the bug, and suck up the expense of paying extra $$$ to pilots who give up their holidays. Or they could opt for a "move fast 'n' break things" startup that is 12 months away from a "sorry we're closing" page.
flerchin 9y ago
Crew scheduling is complex. At the large airline I used to work for (not AA), they ran network solvers that took months to optimally resolve. Intermediate solutions were available, but the constraints of union contracts, labor laws, the location of people, and the changing schedule of flights meant that optimally solving for minimum labor costs, and impact to our crews' lives, was not trivial.
- kevinmhickey 9y ago
  I too have worked on airline crew scheduling. The merging of union contracts, federal regulations, company policies and, like you said, the changing flight schedule, created insane complexity. The fact that the whole system at all airlines is essentially auction-based with seniority being the currency of the realm is pretty interesting. The low-rank crew seeing time off available those days had to be pretty shocking.
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  I wonder how far away we are from self flying planes? Whilst there is the added problem of the third dimension over cars, perhaps this domain suffers less from the problem of lots of disorderly users in the same space?
  - MengerSponge 9y ago
    It'll never happen. Modern planes are mostly self-flying, but you must have a human expert able to intervene if something goes wrong. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen... Actually, let me correct that. We already have self-flying planes. They're called drones! We don't use them to transport anything as valuable as humans though.
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > you must have a human expert able to intervene if something goes wrong Similar things were said about cars. Humans make mistakes at certain rates, in predictable as well as novel situations. When the autopilot performs, on average, better, humans will become a safety liability.
      - MengerSponge 9y ago
        The autopilot has to outperform trained experts with hundreds of flight hours and an exceptionally high code of personal conduct. Self driving cars have to outperform the average person who drives like a 100-year-old blind dog who’s texting while driving and drinking a smoothie. Also, their failure mode is easier and much less expensive.
        JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        It’s a difficult problem that we have not solved. But you said “must”. That’s a strict word to use for a problem that can be solved within a decade or two.
        yladiz 9y ago
        As someone who isn't afraid of flying (except in the case where the pilot has to suddenly drop the airplane due to turbulence) I still wouldn't trust a pilotless airplane until it's safer then with a pilot, which will be very difficult to prove. I feel also that I'm not alone and many people who fly would be extremely wary of a pilotless system. On the other hand, I would be much more likely to trust a self driving car. The main reason is that, if a self driving car malfunctions, the risk of my death is present but not absolutely guaranteed and with all of the safety features in a car it's likely I would still be alive after a crash, even at high speeds. A plane that has an autopilot malfunction, with no human present, without changes to the safety during a crash, would be essentially guaranteed to kill everyone on board. Until a plane can crash from the sky without killing all passengers in most scenarios, I wouldn't fly in a pilotless airplane.
- applecrazy 9y ago
  I've always wondered how the algorithms behind scheduling different events work given certain constraints. Are there resources (papers, articles, etc.) where I can learn about these algorithms, or even just a search query I can try that will point me in the right direction? EDIT: spelling
  - mlevental 9y ago
    clrs has plenty on it.
    - applecrazy 9y ago
      thanks, but I was looking for the specific name of the algorithm. I don't even know what to call it, a dependency graph solving algorithm or something?
      - Kliment 9y ago
        a constraint solver, they're used heavily in CAD as well
      - ddinh 9y ago
        I imagine you could encode the problem as a CSP with each of the legal/contractual factors as a constraint. Despite NP-hardness of CSPs in general, CSP solvers are pretty efficient if the constraints are sparse enough and not chosen adversarially.
      - mmillin 9y ago
        A basic start would be looking at network flow problems. While they don't extend to the complexity of real world airline scheduling, you can construct a simplified airline scheduling problem with it. Additionally, one of the methods to solve these problems, linear programming, does extend to integer linear programming which can be used to solve the more complicated cases (in non-deterministic polynomial time).
- vailripper 9y ago
  No kidding - I worked on a project for a large airline optimizing reserve levels for flight crews and it was pretty fascinating work. The complexity explodes once you scratch past the surface.
godzillabrennus 9y ago
It’s enterprise. Charge them $499/month per user with a 12 month agreement.
- notahacker 9y ago
  The enterprise solutions already exist, and you're competing with suites of products from the likes of Jeppesen(Boeing) and GE for a few hundred customers with substantial lockin to their existing systems and a lot of individual requirements. It's not really a friendly market for new entrants unless someone happens to give you a big fat consulting contract to write software with the rights to sell it to others.

quickthrower2 9y ago

"American Airlines' pilot scheduling system..." Sounds like they have the high tech, but it has a bug. They could fix the bug, and suck up the expense of paying extra $$$ to pilots who give up their holidays. Or they could opt for a "move fast 'n' break things" startup that is 12 months away from a "sorry we're closing" page.

flerchin 9y ago

Crew scheduling is complex. At the large airline I used to work for (not AA), they ran network solvers that took months to optimally resolve. Intermediate solutions were available, but the constraints of union contracts, labor laws, the location of people, and the changing schedule of flights meant that optimally solving for minimum labor costs, and impact to our crews' lives, was not trivial.

kevinmhickey 9y ago
I too have worked on airline crew scheduling. The merging of union contracts, federal regulations, company policies and, like you said, the changing flight schedule, created insane complexity. The fact that the whole system at all airlines is essentially auction-based with seniority being the currency of the realm is pretty interesting. The low-rank crew seeing time off available those days had to be pretty shocking.
jimnotgym 9y ago
I wonder how far away we are from self flying planes? Whilst there is the added problem of the third dimension over cars, perhaps this domain suffers less from the problem of lots of disorderly users in the same space?
- MengerSponge 9y ago
  It'll never happen. Modern planes are mostly self-flying, but you must have a human expert able to intervene if something goes wrong. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen... Actually, let me correct that. We already have self-flying planes. They're called drones! We don't use them to transport anything as valuable as humans though.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > you must have a human expert able to intervene if something goes wrong Similar things were said about cars. Humans make mistakes at certain rates, in predictable as well as novel situations. When the autopilot performs, on average, better, humans will become a safety liability.
    - MengerSponge 9y ago
      The autopilot has to outperform trained experts with hundreds of flight hours and an exceptionally high code of personal conduct. Self driving cars have to outperform the average person who drives like a 100-year-old blind dog who’s texting while driving and drinking a smoothie. Also, their failure mode is easier and much less expensive.
      - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        It’s a difficult problem that we have not solved. But you said “must”. That’s a strict word to use for a problem that can be solved within a decade or two.
        yladiz 9y ago
        As someone who isn't afraid of flying (except in the case where the pilot has to suddenly drop the airplane due to turbulence) I still wouldn't trust a pilotless airplane until it's safer then with a pilot, which will be very difficult to prove. I feel also that I'm not alone and many people who fly would be extremely wary of a pilotless system. On the other hand, I would be much more likely to trust a self driving car. The main reason is that, if a self driving car malfunctions, the risk of my death is present but not absolutely guaranteed and with all of the safety features in a car it's likely I would still be alive after a crash, even at high speeds. A plane that has an autopilot malfunction, with no human present, without changes to the safety during a crash, would be essentially guaranteed to kill everyone on board. Until a plane can crash from the sky without killing all passengers in most scenarios, I wouldn't fly in a pilotless airplane.
applecrazy 9y ago
I've always wondered how the algorithms behind scheduling different events work given certain constraints. Are there resources (papers, articles, etc.) where I can learn about these algorithms, or even just a search query I can try that will point me in the right direction? EDIT: spelling
- mlevental 9y ago
  clrs has plenty on it.
  - applecrazy 9y ago
    thanks, but I was looking for the specific name of the algorithm. I don't even know what to call it, a dependency graph solving algorithm or something?
    - Kliment 9y ago
      a constraint solver, they're used heavily in CAD as well
    - ddinh 9y ago
      I imagine you could encode the problem as a CSP with each of the legal/contractual factors as a constraint. Despite NP-hardness of CSPs in general, CSP solvers are pretty efficient if the constraints are sparse enough and not chosen adversarially.
    - mmillin 9y ago
      A basic start would be looking at network flow problems. While they don't extend to the complexity of real world airline scheduling, you can construct a simplified airline scheduling problem with it. Additionally, one of the methods to solve these problems, linear programming, does extend to integer linear programming which can be used to solve the more complicated cases (in non-deterministic polynomial time).
vailripper 9y ago
No kidding - I worked on a project for a large airline optimizing reserve levels for flight crews and it was pretty fascinating work. The complexity explodes once you scratch past the surface.

godzillabrennus 9y ago

It’s enterprise. Charge them $499/month per user with a 12 month agreement.

notahacker 9y ago
The enterprise solutions already exist, and you're competing with suites of products from the likes of Jeppesen(Boeing) and GE for a few hundred customers with substantial lockin to their existing systems and a lot of individual requirements. It's not really a friendly market for new entrants unless someone happens to give you a big fat consulting contract to write software with the rights to sell it to others.