With an application in the pick-up of blood samples

This talk analyzes the impact of vehicle tracking devices, such as global positioning systems, on a vehicle routing problem with time windows in the presence of dynamic customer requests and dynamic travel times. It is empirically demonstrated that substantial improvements are achieved over a previously reported model which does not assume such tracking devices. We also analyze how the system handles dynamic perturbations to the travel times that lead to earliness or lateness in the planned schedule. The benefit of the approach is illustrated for the pick-up of blood samples and the delivery of medical items, for which unusual time windows are considered.

Speaker: Nicolas Zufferey, full professor of operations management at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.