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Main Authors: Stein, Jonas, Hildebrandt, Florentin D, Thomas, Barrett W, Ulmer, Marlin W
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01815
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author Stein, Jonas
Hildebrandt, Florentin D
Thomas, Barrett W
Ulmer, Marlin W
author_facet Stein, Jonas
Hildebrandt, Florentin D
Thomas, Barrett W
Ulmer, Marlin W
contents Home repair and installation services require technicians to visit customers and resolve tasks of different complexity. Technicians often have heterogeneous skills and working experiences. The geographical spread of customers makes achieving only perfect matches between technician skills and task requirements impractical. Additionally, technicians are regularly absent due to sickness. With non-perfect assignments regarding task requirement and technician skill, some tasks may remain unresolved and require a revisit and rework. Companies seek to minimize customer inconvenience due to delay. We model the problem as a sequential decision process where, over a number of service days, customers request service while heterogeneously skilled technicians are routed to serve customers in the system. Each day, our policy iteratively builds tours by adding "important" customers. The importance bases on analytical considerations and is measured by respecting routing efficiency, urgency of service, and risk of rework in an integrated fashion. We propose a state-dependent balance of these factors via reinforcement learning. A comprehensive study shows that taking a few non-perfect assignments can be quite beneficial for the overall service quality. We further demonstrate the value provided by a state-dependent parametrization.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_01815
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning State-Dependent Policy Parametrizations for Dynamic Technician Routing with Rework
Stein, Jonas
Hildebrandt, Florentin D
Thomas, Barrett W
Ulmer, Marlin W
Artificial Intelligence
Home repair and installation services require technicians to visit customers and resolve tasks of different complexity. Technicians often have heterogeneous skills and working experiences. The geographical spread of customers makes achieving only perfect matches between technician skills and task requirements impractical. Additionally, technicians are regularly absent due to sickness. With non-perfect assignments regarding task requirement and technician skill, some tasks may remain unresolved and require a revisit and rework. Companies seek to minimize customer inconvenience due to delay. We model the problem as a sequential decision process where, over a number of service days, customers request service while heterogeneously skilled technicians are routed to serve customers in the system. Each day, our policy iteratively builds tours by adding "important" customers. The importance bases on analytical considerations and is measured by respecting routing efficiency, urgency of service, and risk of rework in an integrated fashion. We propose a state-dependent balance of these factors via reinforcement learning. A comprehensive study shows that taking a few non-perfect assignments can be quite beneficial for the overall service quality. We further demonstrate the value provided by a state-dependent parametrization.
title Learning State-Dependent Policy Parametrizations for Dynamic Technician Routing with Rework
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01815