A multi-criteria vehicle routing approach to improve the compliance audit schedule for food banks
•Development of The Food bank Compliance problem extending a VRPTW.•New VRP model elements specific to food banks e.g., maximum wait time.•Creation of exact and heuristic methods to solve the new model.•Multi-criteria analysis to evaluate trade-offs between competing objectives for food banks.•Demon...
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| Published in: | Omega (Oxford) 2019-04, Vol.84, p.127-140 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | •Development of The Food bank Compliance problem extending a VRPTW.•New VRP model elements specific to food banks e.g., maximum wait time.•Creation of exact and heuristic methods to solve the new model.•Multi-criteria analysis to evaluate trade-offs between competing objectives for food banks.•Demonstrated significant improvements through collaborative, community-based OR.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, more than 49 million Americans do not have access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. To address the issue of food insecurity, non-profit food banks service a number of regional agencies that provide emergency food relief. To maintain regulatory compliance, each agency serviced by a food bank must receive an on-site audit once every 12–18 months. All audits are made by a member of the food bank’s staff. In collaboration with our community partner, we develop a multi-criteria capacitated vehicle routing with multiple time windows approach to improve the efficiency of the auditing schedule. Using real data from The Foodbank Inc., in Dayton, OH, we evaluate our model using both exact and heuristic methods and analyze the trade-offs between three competing objectives which correspond to our system’s three key stakeholders. Our computational results demonstrate an ability to quickly find solutions which improve upon the current operations at The Foodbank Inc. thereby benefiting all stakeholders and ultimately the community. |
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| ISSN: | 0305-0483 1873-5274 |