Simulation and Analysis of Disruptive Events on a Deterministic Home Health Care Routing and Scheduling Solution

Due to the aging of populations and a desire to relieve the growing demand on medical structures in recent years, the demand for home health care services has been increasing, and the Home Health Care Routing and Scheduling Problem (HHCRSP) is now among the most intensely studied optimization problems. However, most studies on the HHCRSP are based on deterministic models that do not consider any disruptions that may compromise the execution of the schedules. In this paper, we analyze the impact of different sources of disturbances on a deterministic schedule: delays at the start of the route, variability of travel time, and variability of service processing time. Simulation has been chosen because it helps to easily model and analyze complex environments with several sources of variability. Graphical representations and an analysis of variance are presented to interpret the results, leading to several managerial insights and openings for future research.