Synchronization in Vehicle Routing: Benders’ Decomposition for the Home Health Care Routing and Scheduling Problem

Abstract

This chapter investigates a vehicle routing problem with synchronization requirements for the services provided to customers. The problem finds an application in the home health care branch, where staff members of health care agencies have to be routed and services at patients’ homes have to be scheduled. The latter can involve simultaneous services, where two staff members have to serve one patient jointly, and services with given precedence, where two service operations have to be provided to a patient within a given time distance. This paper presents a Benders’ decomposition method for solving this problem exactly.