The decentralized field service routing problem

Edison Avraham, Tal Raviv and Eugene Khmelnitsky

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2017, vol. 104, issue C, 290-316

Abstract: Companies that provide service at geographically dispersed locations face the problem of determining the technician that will serve each location as well as setting the best route for each technician. Such a scenario is known as the field service routing problem. Large companies often outsource their field service tasks to several contractors. Each contractor may serve several companies. Since the contractors cannot share the information about the tasks of their other clients, the most common practice involves allocating the tasks to the contractors heuristically based on geographical considerations. In this approach, the tasks for which the contractors have already been committed to other companies are not considered. As a result, the allocation of new tasks can be inefficient. This study develops 2-stage task allocation mechanisms that cope with the problem and result in nearly optimal allocations.

Keywords: Collaborative vehicle routing; Decentralized optimization problems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2017.07.005

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