The multi-period service territory design problem – An introduction, a model and a heuristic approach. (December 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bender, Matthias; Meyer, Anne; Kalcsics, Jörg; Nickel, Stefan
• Is Part Of: Transportation research. Volume 96(2016)
• Page Start: 135
• Page End: 157
• Publication Date: 2016-12
• Subjects: Territory design -- Multi-period planning horizon -- Mixed integer linear programming -- Location-allocation heuristic; 90B06 -- 90B80 -- 90C59; Logistics -- Periodicals; Transportation -- Periodicals; 388.011
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2016.09.007
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1366-5545

Abstract

Highlights: A real-world multi-period territory design problem is presented. The scheduling subproblem is formally defined as a mixed integer program (MIP). A heuristic based on a location-allocation scheme is developed. Experiments on real-word instances show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Abstract: In service territory design applications, a field service workforce is responsible for providing recurring services at their customers' sites. We introduce the associated planning problem, which consists of two subproblems: In the partitioning subproblem, customers must be grouped into service territories. In the scheduling subproblem, customer visits must be scheduled throughout the multi-period planning horizon. The emphasis of this paper is put on the scheduling subproblem. We propose a mixed integer programming model for this subproblem and present a location-allocation heuristic. The results of extensive experiments on real-world instances show that the proposed heuristic produces high-quality solutions.