ALLOCATION AND ROUTING OF MOBILE COMPUTED-TOMOGRAPHY EQUIPMENT

We consider the problem of allocating and routing mobile medical equip ment to hospitals, as faced by an equipment leasing company. The equip ment is leased to hospitals across the United States for periods rangi ng from a few weeks to many months. The problem is to satisfy the requ irements of hospitals with different demand schedules given the equipm ent available. The objective is to maximize total revenues generated l ess the transportation costs incurred. The problem is here modeled as a network flow formulation. A spreadsheet-based decision support syste m was developed and implemented in a firm with no expertise or prior e xperience in such modeling efforts. Details of the system and its impl ementation are provided.