Simulation-based optimization for surgery appointment scheduling of multiple operating rooms

Zheng Zhang and Xiaolan Xie

IISE Transactions, 2015, vol. 47, issue 9, 998-1012

Abstract: This study is devoted to the appointment scheduling (AS) for a sequence of surgeries with random durations served by multiple operating rooms (Multi-OR). Surgeries are assigned to ORs dynamically on a first-come, first-serve (FCFS) basis. It materially differs from past literature in the sense that dynamic assignments are proactively anticipated in the determination of appointment times. A discrete-event framework is proposed to model the execution of the surgery schedule and to evaluate the sample path gradient of a total cost incurred by surgeon waiting, OR idling, and OR overtime. The sample path cost function is shown to be unimodal, Lipchitz-continuous, and differentiable w.p.1 and the expected cost function continuously differentiable. A stochastic approximation algorithm based on unbiased gradient estimators is proposed and extensive numerical experiments suggest that it converges to a global optimum. A series of numerical experiments is performed to show the significant benefits of the Multi-OR setting and properties of the optimal solution with respect to various system parameters such as cost structure and numbers of surgeries and ORs.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0740817X.2014.999900 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:uiiexx:v:47:y:2015:i:9:p:998-1012

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uiie20

DOI: 10.1080/0740817X.2014.999900

Access Statistics for this article

IISE Transactions is currently edited by Jianjun Shi

More articles in IISE Transactions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().