Multiperiodic planning and routing on a rolling horizon for field force optimization logistics
Résumé
Field force planning and optimization is a new challenge in logistics for the service sector. In the energy or water distribution areas, it consists in planning the visits of commercial or technical personnel on the field over a set of time periods (days) to visit industrial facilities or customers in order to satisfy requests for service. Demands can be for planned maintenance of equipments, commercial activities or emergency maintenance activities. Our application is relative to water distribution and field force optimization for planning the visits of personnel to clients over a multiperiod horizon and a specific geographic area. Visits to customers can be planned through a call center upon customer demand or upon the company's request. In order to provide a tool for optimization on a rolling horizon in this context and test these hypotheses, we have proposed a reoptimization procedure. We have developed a demand generator and solution technique using the memetic algorithm and column generation methods previously developed for the fixed horizon planning problem. Experiences on realistic data validate our approach and allow us to suggest some further researches for this problem.