An integer programming approach to the bloodmobile routing problem

Every day, a blood center must determine a set of locations among a group of potential sites to route their vehicles for blood collection so as to avoid shortfalls. In this study, a vehicle routing problem is modeled using an integer programming approach to simultaneously identify number of bloodmobiles to operate and minimize the distance travelled. Additionally, the model is extended to incorporate uncertainty in blood potentials and variable durations in bloodmobile visits. Optimal routings are determined using CPLEX solver and branch-and-price algorithm. Results show that proposed algorithm solve the problem to optimality up to 30 locations within 3600 s.