Supplying Personal Protective Equipment to Intensive Care Units during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Colombia. A Simheuristic Approach Based on the Location-Routing Problem

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019, known as COVID-19, has generated an imminent necessity for personal protective equipment (PPE) that became essential for all populations and much more for health centers, clinics, hospitals, and intensive care units (ICUs). Considering this fact, one of the main issues for cities’ governments is the distribution of PPE to ICUs to ensure the protection of medical personnel and, therefore, the sustainability of the health system. Aware of this challenge, in this paper, we propose a simheuristic approach for supplying personal protective equipment to intensive care units which is based on the location-routing problem (LRP). The objective is to provide decision makers with a decision support tool that considers uncertain demands, distribution cost, and reliability in the solutions. To validate our approach, a case study in Bogotá, Colombia was analyzed. Computational results show the efficiency of the usage of alternative safety stock policies to face demand uncertainty in terms of both expected stochastic costs and reliabilities.