Vehicle Routing Problem For Home Healthcare System In Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

Logistics in Vietnam is known as a one of the sectors development industry and contributes significantly to the country's economy. In particular, transportation is always an integral part of logistics. In this study, the home healthcare problem is applied in Ho Chi Minh City, the problem of moving between patient locations is solved in order to optimize the route, saving transportation costs. This case applies heuristic search and mathematical model to arrange the desired route to obtain the goal of the minimal total cost. Proposing two research directions with two methods to achieve a solution, the first aim is to find exact solution by integer programming, the second stage using heuristic searching tool based on Simulated annealing algorithm by Matlab software programming to apply with larger scale of customer. The results pointed out that the Simulated annealing algorithm in this study helps home healthcare service to improve the process of assigning driver of each type of vehicle with appropriate route.