01626523

Component

The authors address the real-time Field Service Engineer (FSE) routing and scheduling problem encountered in human resources operations. For many companies the assignment of FSEs to jobs is challenging due to the dynamic occurrence of job requests. This adds up to contractual conditions generally imposing hard service time windows (TW) and high service standards, e.g. maximum response time to an emergency. The problem also includes further constraints defining: (i) collaborations between the FSEs (if needed), and (ii) different levels of jobs’ emergency (the higher the job emergency, the faster reaction is required). An additional factor, usually neglected, which needs to be considered is the comfort of the FSEs regarding the route stability. To account for this aspect the authors propose a novel methodological approach that aims at mitigating the disruption propagation in addition to the minimization of the operational cost - i.e. if a FSE is not assigned to an emergency, his planning should not change, or suffer minimal deviations if close to the emergency location. To solve the problem, the authors designed an event-driven simulation-based optimization approach using Large Neighborhood Search. This research is a result of a commercial engagement with industry and provides results for the real-life inspired scenarios.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AT015 Standing Committee on Freight Transportation Planning and Logistics.

01618707

17-01835

English

24p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Engineers; Human resources management; Methodology; Optimization; Routing; Scheduling; Simulation

Administration and Management; Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General)

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-01835

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 10:38AM