Modeling and analysis of a home care routing problem

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1615007 (Table of Contents)

This thesis proposes the Home Care Routing Problem with Time Windows (HCRPTW) which is an extension to the well-known Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW). Different than VRPTW, we solve the routing problem of the health care personnel of a Home Health Care (HHC) service provider when the patients require different types of services. In this problem, the patients may request different types of care which can be provided by two types of personnel: nurses and health care aides. Each patient must be visited exactly once even if her servicing requires both personnel and is associated with a strict time window during which the service must be provided. In order to solve this problem, we present the 0-1 mixed integer programming formulation of the problem. The problem can be modeled with three different objective functions which are to minimize the total distance travelled, to minimize the total number of personnel and to minimize the total number of vehicles. We randomly generate a set of instances based on Solomon’s benchmark problems for the VRPTW and solve them using IBM ILOG CPLEX. We also study Crew Constrained Home Care Routing Problem with Time Windows (CC-HCRPTW) which is another extension of HCRPTW where the number of each type of personnel is limited.