Location/allocation/routing for home-delivered meals provision

Home-delivered meals (HDM) provision is a volunteer-staffed activity for which little strategic planning is currently performed. We present and evaluate an interactive GIS-based heuristic to solve the HDM location–routing problem. This planning model addresses facility location, allocation of demand to facilities and design of delivery routes and balances efficiency, effectiveness and equity considerations. HDM planning differs from private-sector multi-level distribution system design because the planning is done only infrequently and intended primarily for identification of service gaps. We apply the interactive heuristic to a set of customers currently served by a subset of kitchens and show that our system generates catchment areas that are more compact and require fewer vehicles than are used by existing kitchens. We also argue that this planning process represents a leap forward in sophistication from the status quo and allows planners to incorporate preferences that are difficult to capture in a straightforward implementation of a mathematical model.