A genetic type-2 fuzzy logic based approach for the optimal allocation of mobile field engineers to their working areas

Abstract

In utility based service industries with a large mobile workforce, there is a need to optimize the process of allocating engineers to tasks (i.e. fixing faults, installing new services, such as internet connections, gas or electricity etc.). Part of the process of optimizing the resource allocation to tasks involves finding the optimum area for an engineer to operate within, which we term as work area optimization. Work area optimization in large businesses can have a noticeable impact on business costs, revenues and customer satisfaction. However when attempting to optimize the workforce in real world scenarios, mostly single objective optimization algorithms are used while employing crisp logic. Nevertheless, there are many objectives that need to be satisfied and hence multi-objective based optimization will be more suitable. Even where multi-objective optimization is employed, the involved systems fail to recognize that these real world problems are full of uncertainties. Type-2 fuzzy logic systems can handle the high level of uncertainties associated with the dynamic and changing environments, such as those presented with real world scheduling problems. This paper presents a novel multi-objective genetic type-2 Fuzzy Logic based System for the optimal allocation of mobile workforces to their working areas. The method has been applied in a real world service industry workforce environment. The results show strong improvements when the proposed multi-objective type-2 fuzzy genetic based optimization system was applied to the work area optimization problem as compared to the heuristic or type-1 single objective optimization of the work area. Such optimization improvements of the working areas will result in improving the utilization of the workforce.