Mixed integer programming with decomposition to solve a workforce scheduling and routing problem

Wasakorn Laesanklang, Dario Landa-Silva, J. Arturo Castillo-Salazar

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We propose an approach based on mixed integer programming (MIP) with decomposition to solve a workforce scheduling and routing problem, in which a set of workers should be assigned to tasks that are distributed across different geographical locations. This problem arises from a number of home care planning scenarios in the UK, faced by our industrial partner. We present a mixed integer programming model that incorporates important real-world features of the problem such as defined geographical regions and flexibility in the workers' availability. Given the size of the real-world instances, we propose to decompose the problem based on geographical areas. We show that the quality of the overall solution is affected by the ordering in which the sub-problems are tackled. Hence, we investigate different ordering strategies to solve the sub-problems and show that such decomposition approach is a very promising technique to produce high-quality solutions in practical computational times using an exact optimization method.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationICORES 2015 - 4th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems, Proceedings
EditorsBegona Vitoriano, Greg H. Parlier
PublisherSciTePress
Pages283-293
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9789897580758
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015
Externally publishedYes
Event4th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems, ICORES 2015 - Lisbon, Portugal
Duration: 10 Jan 201512 Jan 2015

Publication series

NameICORES 2015 - 4th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems, Proceedings

Conference

Conference4th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems, ICORES 2015
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityLisbon
Period10/01/1512/01/15

Keywords

  • Home care scheduling
  • Mixed integer programming
  • Problem decomposition
  • Routing problem
  • Workforce scheduling

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