Scheduling linen deliveries in a large hospital
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#1998 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved. 0160-5682/98 $12.00 http://www.stockton-press.co.uk/jor
Scheduling linen deliveries in a large hospital M Banerjea-Brodeur1, J-F Cordeau1, G Laporte1 and A Lasry2 1
GERAD and EÂcole des Hautes EÂtudes Commerciales, and 2 Numetrix Limited, Canada
This article describes the results of a study aimed at improving linen delivery operations in a large teaching hospital in Montreal. Improvements over the previous system were obtained by reassessing the quantities of linen to be delivered and by redesigning the delivery schedule. The problem was solved by means of a tabu search algorithm. After a trial period, the system has been implemented at the hospital. Keywords: hospital; linen delivery; periodic vehicle routing; tabu search heuristic
Introduction The Jewish General Hospital (JGH) is a 637 bed teaching facility af®liated with McGill University in Montreal. We describe an Operational Research study aimed at improving the delivery of linen on a daily basis at JGH. Improvements over the current system were derived through a combination of analytical techniques and common sense. In the following sections, we describe how the previous delivery system operated and why it did not run satisfactorily. We then identify two areas where corrective actions were required, and we describe how the problems were solved. Finally, we indicate how the solution was implemented. The previous system Five days a week, the laundry delivers clean linen to 58 clinics scattered over six pavilions. The linen consists of bedsheets, pillow cases, ¯annels, gowns, towels, etc. The operations do not cover collection of dirty linen as this is sent to the laundry through an elaborate chute system. The laundry is staffed by two employees working in the laundry ®ve days a week, for a limited time each day, and spending the remainder of their time on other tasks in the hospital. One employee receives calls from various clinics and loads the required linen into a delivery cart. The second employee performs the deliveries. There were several problems with the delivery system in use until early 1997. A schedule speci®ed for each delivery point on which days of the week deliveries should be made and the quantities of linen to be delivered. We observed that in practice this schedule could not be respected as quotas did not correspond to the actual needs in most cases. As a result, shortages were frequent and much time was wasted by people in clinics making phone calls to the laundry for additioinal Correspondence: Dr G Laporte, Centre de recherche sur les transports (CRT), Universite de MontreÂal, C.P. 6128, succursale A, MontreÂal, Canada H3C 3J7 E-mail: [email protected]
deliveries. The laundry staff wasted countless hours answering calls and arranging special deliveries. Since a majority of deliveries were thereby made on an emergency basis, proper route planning was next to impossible. This resulted in extra unproductive work by the laundry staff, poor service, and frustration on all
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