Title: A GVNS-based approach for periodic consumables delivery to home hemodialysis patients: a case study

Authors: Haifa Nouira; Adnen El-Amraoui; Sondes Hammami; Gilles Goncalves; Hanen Bouchriha

Addresses: Université de Tunis El Manar, Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Tunis LR11ES20, Laboratoire Analyse, Conception et Commande des Systèmes, Tunis, Tunisia; University of Artois, UR 3926 Laboratoire de Génie Informatique et d'Automatique de l'Artois (LGI2A), F-62400, Béthune, France ' University of Artois, UR 3926 Laboratoire de Génie Informatique et d'Automatique de l'Artois (LGI2A), F-62400, Béthune, France ' Université de Tunis El Manar, Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Tunis LR11ES20, Laboratoire Analyse, Conception et Commande des Systèmes, Tunis, Tunisia; Université de Carthage, Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Carthage LR11ES20, Laboratoire Analyse, Conception et Commande des Systèmes, Tunis, Tunisia ' University of Artois, UR 3926 Laboratoire de Génie Informatique et d'Automatique de l'Artois (LGI2A), F-62400, Béthune, France ' Université de Tunis El Manar, Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Tunis LR11ES20, Laboratoire Analyse, Conception et Commande des Systèmes, Tunis, Tunisia

Abstract: The use of home hemodialysis (HHD) has the potential to lower healthcare costs while improving quality-adjusted survival and quality of patient's life. Nevertheless, the number of patients on this modality of dialysis remains low due to several barriers among which the problem of storage capacity. In fact, patients have a limited storage capacity in their homes, so they cannot store the required consumables (i.e., commodities) for long-term treatment sessions. Therefore, to promote HD use by dialysis patients, healthcare systems should offer flexible service that satisfies the patient's need in term of delivery frequency. Getting inspired by the periodic vehicle routing problem (PVRP), we develop here a mathematical formulation of the considered problem, and we propose a new approach based on the general variable neighbourhood search metaheuristic (GVNS) to solve it, due to its NP-hardness. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, several tests have been performed. [Received: 9 August 2022; Accepted: 23 March 2023]

Keywords: home dialysis care; periodic VRP; GVNS metaheuristic; visit frequency choice; cluster-first route-second heuristic approach.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIE.2024.138215

European Journal of Industrial Engineering, 2024 Vol.18 No.3, pp.365 - 409

Received: 09 Aug 2022
Accepted: 23 Mar 2023
Published online: 30 Apr 2024 *

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