IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joheur/v26y2020i5d10.1007_s10732-020-09456-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Vehicle routing for the urgent delivery of face shields during the COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Joaquín Pacheco

    (University of Burgos)

  • Manuel Laguna

    (University of Colorado Boulder)

Abstract

The speed by which the COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world caught some national and local governments unprepared. Healthcare systems found themselves struggling to increase capacity and procure key supplies, such as personal protective equipment. Protective face shields became essential for healthcare professionals. However, most hospitals and healthcare facilities did not have them in adequate quantities. The urgency of producing and delivering face shields increased as the number of COVID-19 cases rapidly multiplied. This was the situation that we encountered in the city and province of Burgos (Spain). Since there was no time to wait for a large manufacturer to produce face shields, private citizens and small companies volunteered to make them using technologies such as 3D printers. Nonprofits, citizens, and governments agencies volunteered to deliver materials to the face shield makers and to pick up and deliver the face shields to health centers and other locations where they were needed. This resulted in a vehicle routing problem with some special characteristics that made it different from models used for commercial purposes. We describe the development of a heuristic to find feasible and efficient routes for this problem. We highlight the advantages of using heuristics in an emergency context like the one triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the heuristic approach allowed us to design, implement, test, and delivery a routing system in less than 1 week from the time that the local government contacted us with what they described as a logistics nightmare.

Suggested Citation

  • Joaquín Pacheco & Manuel Laguna, 2020. "Vehicle routing for the urgent delivery of face shields during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Heuristics, Springer, vol. 26(5), pages 619-635, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joheur:v:26:y:2020:i:5:d:10.1007_s10732-020-09456-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s10732-020-09456-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10732-020-09456-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10732-020-09456-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ann Melissa Campbell & Dieter Vandenbussche & William Hermann, 2008. "Routing for Relief Efforts," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(2), pages 127-145, May.
    2. Jin Qin & Yong Ye & Bi-rong Cheng & Xiaobo Zhao & Linling Ni, 2017. "The Emergency Vehicle Routing Problem with Uncertain Demand under Sustainability Environments," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-24, February.
    3. Fred Glover, 1989. "Tabu Search---Part I," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 1(3), pages 190-206, August.
    4. Yinglei Li & Sung Hoon Chung, 2019. "Disaster relief routing under uncertainty: A robust optimization approach," IISE Transactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(8), pages 869-886, August.
    5. Jozefowiez, Nicolas & Semet, Frédéric & Talbi, El-Ghazali, 2009. "An evolutionary algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with route balancing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 195(3), pages 761-769, June.
    6. Wohlgemuth, Sascha & Oloruntoba, Richard & Clausen, Uwe, 2012. "Dynamic vehicle routing with anticipation in disaster relief," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 261-271.
    7. Joaquín Pacheco & Rafael Caballero & Manuel Laguna & Julián Molina, 2013. "Bi-Objective Bus Routing: An Application to School Buses in Rural Areas," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(3), pages 397-411, August.
    8. Fred Glover, 1990. "Tabu Search—Part II," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 4-32, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lubing Wang & Xufeng Zhao & Peng Wu, 2025. "Large-scale emergency medical services scheduling during the outbreak of epidemics," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 348(1), pages 445-469, May.
    2. Andrés Martínez-Reyes & Carlos L. Quintero-Araújo & Elyn L. Solano-Charris, 2021. "Supplying Personal Protective Equipment to Intensive Care Units during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Colombia. A Simheuristic Approach Based on the Location-Routing Problem," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-16, July.
    3. Zhen Li & Wen Gu & Qingfeng Meng, 2023. "The impact of COVID‐19 on logistics and coping strategies: A literature review," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(8), pages 1768-1794, October.
    4. Lijing Du & Xiaohuan Li & Yuan Gan & Kaijun Leng, 2022. "Optimal Model and Algorithm of Medical Materials Delivery Drone Routing Problem under Major Public Health Emergencies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-17, April.
    5. Dennis Adelhütte & Kristin Braun & Frauke Liers & Sebastian Tschuppik, 2025. "Minimizing delays of patient transports with incomplete information: A modeling approach based on the vehicle routing problem," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 47(2), pages 565-604, June.
    6. Maciel M. Queiroz & Samuel Fosso Wamba, 2024. "A structured literature review on the interplay between emerging technologies and COVID-19 – insights and directions to operations fields," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 335(3), pages 937-963, April.
    7. Keyong Lin & S. Nurmaya Musa & Hwa Jen Yap, 2022. "Vehicle Routing Optimization for Pandemic Containment: A Systematic Review on Applications and Solution Approaches," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-27, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haochen Zhang & Shaowei Cai & Chuan Luo & Minghao Yin, 2017. "An efficient local search algorithm for the winner determination problem," Journal of Heuristics, Springer, vol. 23(5), pages 367-396, October.
    2. Mohammad Javad Feizollahi & Igor Averbakh, 2014. "The Robust (Minmax Regret) Quadratic Assignment Problem with Interval Flows," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 26(2), pages 321-335, May.
    3. C N Potts & V A Strusevich, 2009. "Fifty years of scheduling: a survey of milestones," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 41-68, May.
    4. Cazzaro, Davide & Fischetti, Martina & Fischetti, Matteo, 2020. "Heuristic algorithms for the Wind Farm Cable Routing problem," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(C).
    5. Fiondella, Lance & Lin, Yi-Kuei & Pham, Hoang & Chang, Ping-Chen & Li, Chendong, 2017. "A confidence-based approach to reliability design considering correlated failures," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 102-114.
    6. Johan Barthelemy & Philippe L. Toint, 2013. "Synthetic Population Generation Without a Sample," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(2), pages 266-279, May.
    7. Huang, Yeran & Yang, Lixing & Tang, Tao & Gao, Ziyou & Cao, Fang, 2017. "Joint train scheduling optimization with service quality and energy efficiency in urban rail transit networks," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 1124-1147.
    8. B Dengiz & C Alabas-Uslu & O Dengiz, 2009. "Optimization of manufacturing systems using a neural network metamodel with a new training approach," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(9), pages 1191-1197, September.
    9. S-W Lin & K-C Ying, 2008. "A hybrid approach for single-machine tardiness problems with sequence-dependent setup times," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(8), pages 1109-1119, August.
    10. Shao, Saijun & Xu, Su Xiu & Huang, George Q., 2020. "Variable neighborhood search and tabu search for auction-based waste collection synchronization," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 1-20.
    11. Joseph B. Mazzola & Robert H. Schantz, 1997. "Multiple‐facility loading under capacity‐based economies of scope," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(3), pages 229-256, April.
    12. Abdmouleh, Zeineb & Gastli, Adel & Ben-Brahim, Lazhar & Haouari, Mohamed & Al-Emadi, Nasser Ahmed, 2017. "Review of optimization techniques applied for the integration of distributed generation from renewable energy sources," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 266-280.
    13. Masoud Yaghini & Mohammad Karimi & Mohadeseh Rahbar, 2015. "A set covering approach for multi-depot train driver scheduling," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 636-654, April.
    14. Fred W. Glover, 2022. "Unforeseen Consequences of “Tabu” Choices—A Retrospective," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 34(3), pages 1306-1308, May.
    15. Chris S. K. Leung & Henry Y. K. Lau, 2018. "Multiobjective Simulation-Based Optimization Based on Artificial Immune Systems for a Distribution Center," Journal of Optimization, Hindawi, vol. 2018, pages 1-15, May.
    16. de Oliveira, Raphael Mazzine Barbosa & Sörensen, Kenneth & Martens, David, 2024. "A model-agnostic and data-independent tabu search algorithm to generate counterfactuals for tabular, image, and text data," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 317(2), pages 286-302.
    17. Ilfat Ghamlouche & Teodor Gabriel Crainic & Michel Gendreau, 2003. "Cycle-Based Neighbourhoods for Fixed-Charge Capacitated Multicommodity Network Design," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 51(4), pages 655-667, August.
    18. Olli Bräysy & Michel Gendreau, 2005. "Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows, Part II: Metaheuristics," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(1), pages 119-139, February.
    19. Joaquín Pacheco & Rafael Caballero & Manuel Laguna & Julián Molina, 2013. "Bi-Objective Bus Routing: An Application to School Buses in Rural Areas," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(3), pages 397-411, August.
    20. Servranckx, Tom & Vanhoucke, Mario, 2019. "A tabu search procedure for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with alternative subgraphs," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 273(3), pages 841-860.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:joheur:v:26:y:2020:i:5:d:10.1007_s10732-020-09456-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.