Decision Support System for a Real-Time Field Service Engineer Scheduling Problem with Emergencies and Collaborations

Abstract

Repeated replanning with a heuristic for solving a type of vehicle routing problem was used in a dynamic routing and scheduling problem. This problem occurs when field service engineers are assigned a sequence of jobs to attend. The jobs are geographically distributed, and not all jobs to be undertaken are known in advance of planning. This dynamic occurrence of job requests is stochastic. Jobs are assigned an emergency level, which is highest for repair jobs involving a person in danger. In addition, some jobs require two engineers; such jobs are referred to as collaborative. The presented approach reschedules the pending jobs in an event-driven manner (i.e., every time a new repair job is required). The event-driven scheduling process ensures that jobs of high importance, with a high emergency level, are completed promptly. This approach to event-driven replanning will allow companies to plan for real-world scenarios with significantly fewer resources than are used in practice.