A goal programming approach for multi objective, multi-trips and time window routing problem in home health care service

Abstract

The structure of services in the health sector is changed by the epidemic diseases affecting the world, the population growth and developing technologies. Due to the advantages it provides, home health care (HHC) services are increasingly being demanded by patients. With the in-crease in demand for HHC, the interest of researchers in Home Health Care Routing Problem (HHCRP) is also increasing. In this study, HHCRP has been studied based on information gathered from a relevant unit of a State Hospital providing HHC services in Ankara. Due to the limited resources in the hospital under consideration, vehicles often need to be used for multiple rounds. Thus, the HHCRP is considered as a multi-tour routing problem. Besides, the problem has been created with time window constraints in order to ensure that the demands of the patients are met on time. Meantime, meeting all the patient demands and reducing the environmental impacts are two important goals in HHCRP. The reduction of the environmental impacts can be achieved by minimizing the carbon emission of the vehicles used in the HHC. Thus, the problem addressed in this study has been defined as a multi-objective, multi-trip and time-windows home healthcare routing problem (MTTW-HHCRP). Weighted goal programming (GP) method is used to solve the proposed problem. Test problems are randomly generated based on the data and the information obtained from the hospital in Ankara, and the solutions obtained through scenario analysis are evaluated to guide the decision-making process.