The latest version of Carmen Crew Pairing and Carmen Crew Rostering, Carmen9, is currently undergoing final internal testing and will be available for our clients after the summer.

"In Carmen8 we introduced a lot of improvements for optimized crew planning, including one-shot optimization of variable crew and dramatically increased performance," says Fredrik Engel, Product Manager for Carmen's crew planning products. "In Carmen9 we have enhanced the performance of 'jumper' cabin crew optimization, and increased the user's ability to steer and control the optimization. We have also introduced a new platform for the optimization of crew rosters. This platform will immediately bring superior performance to crew roster planning, and it will also make it possible to improve the rostering optimization considerably in future Carmen versions."

Fredrik Engel says that it is important to be able to work with a long-term perspective, and in order to have the proper objectives both in the short-term and long-term you need to have a very close interaction with clients.

"Each year we host a joint-meeting with our clients experts and managers where we ask what they rate as the most important issues. Consistently, the general feedback is for us to continue to develop the optimization to solve their existing and future complex problems in 'an even' more efficient way. In addition to this we also work and improve on features in the manual systems which can make the 'planner's' life easier." says Fredrik Engel. "In Carmen9 we have introduced a lot of new functionality in the editors for crew pairings and crew rosters. This includes more advanced functionality for reverting changes, increased performance when generating reports, graphical objects in reports and on-line help in all systems. We will continue to work hard at staying at the top for Carmen10."

Carmen's business model, based on rental agreements, which includes all upgrades, ensures that clients are always at the forefront of developments and never risk the situation of a forced change because of systems that are based on old technology or not supporting new needs. The business model is extremely effective when combined with the ability to adjust the optimization objective with the built-in modelling language, Carmen Rave. This provides a long-term system solution that allows for any potential changes in the operation.