Route Optimization

The SCTL Center partnered with the Department of Laboratory Medicine to improve the department’s in-house transportation services through route optimization. To help inform supply chain decisions, SCTL research assistant Chelsea Greene and students in Prof. Anne Goodchild’s graduate Civil and Environmental Engineering course identified strategies to improve in-house transportation services, and metrics to evaluate these strategies against the current routes. Results from the analysis allowed the SCTL Center to advise the University of Washington Department of Laboratory Medicine on how to:

• Improve services by minimizing the expected lead time (from the time the specimens are ready for pick up to the time they are delivered to the lab for testing)
• Reduce cost through minimize the extent to which couriers work outside of their maximum shift durations and vehicle miles traveled