Continuous variable control approach for home care crew scheduling
The home care crew scheduling problem (HCCSP) is defined as a dynamic routing and scheduling problem with caretakers' fixed appointments, and therefore has many similarities with the vehicle routing problem with time windows. Considering frequent demand changes regarding resource priorities, appointment alterations, and time windows in HCCSP, the control theoretic approach with discrete event distributed simulation provide substantial benefits by offering real-time response to demand changes. We develop dynamic models for HCCSP with dynamic patient appointments, and explain dynamics that span from controlling crew work times to home-visit scheduling. Also, the real-time feedback control algorithm is proposed to solve HCCSP, where it is performed based on the time-scaled approach that possibly eliminates the need for directly synchronizing events and thereby eliminates the complexity associated with discrete event distributed simulation approaches.