An emergency vehicle dispatching system for an electric utility in Chile

Chilean companies have only recently begun developing and implementing comp uterised systems to aid in decision making, related to the assignment and r outing of vehicles. This paper presents the problem of assigning and routin g repair vehicles for the Emergency Services Division of Chilectra S.A., th e electricity utility for the city of Santiago, the capital of Chile. A com puterised system based on heuristic algorithms was developed for vehicle ro uting with random demand which represent breakdowns that require a repair c rew. An exponential smoothing method was implemented Far the prognosis of b reakdowns. Evaluation of the system's performance showed a 16% improvement in service quality as measured by the time required for servicing breakdown s under regular conditions and a 53% improvement under adverse climate cond itions.