The German automobile club ADAC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club) maintains a heterogeneous fleet of over 1600 service vehicles (units) in order to assist people whose cars break down on their way. All service vehicles are equipped with GPS, which helps to exactly locate each unit in the fleet. In five ADAC help centers (Pannenhilfezentralen) spread over Germany, human operators (dispatcher) constantly assign units to incoming help requests (events) so as to provide for a good quality of service (i.e., waiting times of less 20--60 minutes depending on the system load) and low operational costs (i.e., short total tour length and little overtime costs). Moreover, about 5000 units of service contractors can be employed to cover events that otherwise could not be served in time. This manual dispatching system is now subject to automatization.
The goal of this project is to develop an online dispatching algorithm (in cooperation with the software company Intergraph) that can be used to guarantee quality of service under operational costs that are as small as possible.
