Service technicians of a customer service are dispatched in two steps.
During the customer call, the dispatcher has to arrange for a target date with the customer. The precision is usually a day or half a day.
During every night, a cost-optimal dispatch has to be computed for the following day, so that each customer with target date on that day is visited by an appropriate technician. The result of the optimization substantially depends on the target dates.
The goal is to provide target dates on the phone so as to minimize the cost of the dispatchings that are optimal w.r.t. the given target dates.
HTK-SurveyOnline-Dispatching of Service TechniciansService technicians of a customer service are dispatched in two steps.
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Goals
The goal of this study for Hermes Technischer Kundendienst (HTK) was to estimate the optimization potential in the online dispatching of service technicians at HTK. Moreover, options for the algorithmic realization of this potential should be pointed out.
Computational results with a library of routing heuristics, carried out by our partner Intranetz, show an optimization potential of around 10% in the downstream optimization of the dispatchings task only. The development of a mathematical model for the dispatching task with all relevant ingredients indicates that a column generation algorithm is in reach; an implementation of such an algorithm is, however, beyond the scope of this project. The development of mathematical methods for online target date assignment is ongoing research.
