Analysis of a Collaborative Resilient Solution Based on Real-Time Re-Optimization for Home Health Care Routes Subject to Disruptions by Discrete Event Simulation

Abstract

Home health care centers face many variations during the execution of routes, compromising initial solution planning. Several studies propose robust solutions to counter small variations, but very few are interested in resilient solutions to counter disruptions. In this paper, we propose a collaborative resilient approach based on real-time re-optimization of caregivers’ routes by considering environmental data at the time the disruption comes out (remaining visits, current position of caregivers, etc.). We analyze and compare this new approach with two others from the literature using discrete event simulation. Our approach reduces the total delay time in most scenarios (by 50% to 90% in the best cases) and outperforms literature approaches in half of the cases. These primary results show that there are many avenues for improvement, such as the development of a better solver or a heuristic and the hybridization between different resilient approaches.