Overview
MobiBrasil Pernambuco is a leading public transportation operator from Recife in Pernambuco state, Brazil. More than 60 million passengers use their bus services every year to navigate the city and surrounding municipalities, including São Lourenço and Camaragibe.
Ricardo Rios, the Planning Manager at MobiBrasil Pernambuco, has over 44 years of experience in the public transportation industry. He uses Optibus Planning and Scheduling to optimize MobiBrasil’s schedules, enhance operational efficiency, and manage the complexities of a large-scale bus service.
Challenge
MobiBrasil Pernambuco was facing staffing and vehicle scheduling challenges, including controlling break time, overtime, and idle hours. The company relied on manual processes, spreadsheets, and informal crew relationships to perform these tasks. This process became increasingly difficult and impractical as the company expanded.
“We could no longer work like that and use spreadsheets to keep up with the whole process,” Ricardo explained. “Then Optibus emerged.”
Solution
Optibus’ Planning and Scheduling software, which brings cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and optimization algorithms into the scheduling process, presented a solution to MobiBrasil’s challenges. Using powerful yet easy-to-use tools and automation, the cloud-native software streamlines and speeds up crew and vehicle scheduling for MobiBrasil’s team while also helping them achieve operational goals.
“Optibus came with a proposal to do exactly what we needed,” said Ricardo.
Results
- Faster, More Efficient Scheduling:
In the past, MobiBrasil Pernambuco created schedules “line-by-line”. Implementing Optibus Scheduling and its Rapid Scenario Creation capability, Ricardo rehauled the process so that his team can perform faster, smarter blocking and runcutting by creating schedules based on groups of lines and the best scenarios.
Optibus’ ability to handle numerous complex scheduling conditions and constraints by grouping together bus lines gave MobiBrasil a new level of scalability and flexibility. The same goes for automating their scheduling processes.
“Whenever there is a trip outside the scheduled travel time, Optibus sends us an alert. We can then adjust this time within the Optibus software and correct the scenarios. This has been very valuable and beneficial for our team.”
- Tackling Idle Hours and Overtime
Ricardo applied Optibus’ artificial intelligence-powered crew optimizations to reduce MobiBrasil’s overtime and idle hours. The optimization algorithms helped uncover new ways to lower labor costs and improve crew and vehicle efficiency.
“Optibus, with its artificial intelligence, managed to solve a good part of this process,” said Ricardo. “We have not even come close to exploring all the capabilities that the Optibus software provides us.”
