A multi-criteria vehicle routing approach to improve the compliance audit schedule for food banks

Kellie Schneider and Sarah G. Nurre

Omega, 2019, vol. 84, issue C, 127-140

Abstract: According to the US Department of Agriculture, more than 49 million Americans do not have access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. To address the issue of food insecurity, non-profit food banks service a number of regional agencies that provide emergency food relief. To maintain regulatory compliance, each agency serviced by a food bank must receive an on-site audit once every 12–18 months. All audits are made by a member of the food bank’s staff. In collaboration with our community partner, we develop a multi-criteria capacitated vehicle routing with multiple time windows approach to improve the efficiency of the auditing schedule. Using real data from The Foodbank Inc., in Dayton, OH, we evaluate our model using both exact and heuristic methods and analyze the trade-offs between three competing objectives which correspond to our system’s three key stakeholders. Our computational results demonstrate an ability to quickly find solutions which improve upon the current operations at The Foodbank Inc. thereby benefiting all stakeholders and ultimately the community.

Keywords: Community-based operations research; Capacitated vehicle routing with multiple time windows; Non-profit compliance operations; Food banks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.omega.2018.05.002

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