0000000000206056
AUTHOR
Pentti Nakari
The potential of optimization in communal routing problems: case studies from Finland
Abstract: In many European countries, municipalities offer their inhabitants a wide variety of social services. In this paper we will focus on efficiently scheduling home care, transportation of the elderly, and home meal delivery. These so-called municipal or communal routing problems can be modeled as different variants of the vehicle routing problem, a well-known optimization problem from the literature. We present a focused literature review and report on case studies using Finnish data. The computational results show that there is a significant potential for cost savings for all applications considered.
Communal Transportation: Challenges for Largescale Routing Heuristics
In this report we review the central transportation logistics problems arising in the communal sector, using information gathered from several large communes in Finland and previous literature. Most of the communal transportation problems can be modelled as different variants of the vehicle routing problem. The basic features of the problems are described, modelled and analyzed, and the relevant previous research on the topics is reviewed. In addition, some possible new solution strategies are suggested.
An optimization approach for communal home meal delivery service
Abstract: This paper is the first to discuss the communal home meal delivery problem. The problem can be modelled as a multiple travelling salesman problem with time windows, that is closely related to the well-studied vehicle routing problem with time windows. Experimental results are reported for a real-life case study from Central Finland over several alternative scenarios using the SPIDER commercial solver. The comparison with current practice reveals that a significant savings potential can be obtained using off-the-shelf optimization tools. As such, the potential for supporting real-life communal routing problems can be considered to be important for VRP practitioners.