Galileo Project: Workforce decisions and planning support using AI

At the Port of Montreal, ship arrivals and departures do not follow a regular schedule; port operations take place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Each day, the MEA asks terminal operators for their manpower requirements for the following day. Depending on the availability of workers, their skills and the rules of established collective agreements, a schedule is generated daily at 6 p.m. for port employees. Without predictability of operations and manpower requirements, it is difficult to optimize the training periods offered to employees. The manpower planning and allocation solution we have developed increases the predictability of operations from 24 to 21 days, and reduces manpower deployment errors from 30% to 15%, generating significant savings in labor costs. By taking into account port traffic, weather, quantity and type of cargo, Galileo proposes an optimal scenario for the deployment of manpower that respects collective agreements, the availability of port workers and the skills required. As a result, terminal operators have an additional resource for making better decisions about manpower requirements, and the MEA can better plan its training and optimize resource cost management.