A Memetic Algorithm for staff scheduling problem in airport security service

•We model a staff scheduling problem in airport security service.•We define an integer programming modeling of the problem and a relevant economical function.•We propose a meta-heuristic: a Memetic Algorithm with a dedicated encoding.•We test our algorithm on real instances and compare results with the current software. The staff scheduling problem is widely studied in Operational Research. Various surveys are available in the literature dealing with this problem which concerns various objectives and various constraints. In this article, we present a staff scheduling problem in airport security service. First, a modeling of the problem, and a representation of solutions are shown. The problem is solved in three steps, days-off scheduling, shift scheduling, and staff assignment. We focus on the last step, by providing a Memetic Algorithm (MA) which merged an Evolutionary Algorithm and Local Search techniques. We propose a chromosome encoding, a crossover operator and a combined neighborhood function, specially dedicated to this staff assignment problem. Besides providing better solutions than software currently used, this algorithm provides up to 50% of improvement from initial feasible solutions.