Improving shuttle services quality in VUCA world: evidence from the IT industry

Abstract

Purpose

As the world is becoming more volatile and uncertain, organizations face much complexity in their daily operations. Further, there is a much ambiguity in business operations to achieve the effective utilization of resources. The work optimizes a novel constraint programming model approach of the utilization of shuttle services vehicle while considering cost savings, employee wellbeing and other real an Information Technology enabled service (ITES) industry constraints.

Design/methodology/approach

The present work considers a novel extension of the vehicle routing problem related to the shuttle service operation in an ITES industry in VUCA context. Additionally, the model considers the women safety aspects, which engages the company to provide a security guard for women employees in the night shift.

Findings

Numerical experiments were conducted on real instances data of ITES industrial partner. The results show that the vehicle utilization increased from 75% up to 96% while ensuring in parallel the wellbeing of employees and women safety during the night shift. Finally, the proposed model is converted to a decision support application allowing ITES partner to plan employees shuttle service operations efficiently.

Originality/value

Study has evaluated the shuttle services optimization for ITES industry using data from industrial which makes it a unique contribution to literature in shuttle operations. Further, the study used constraint programming to evaluate the vehicle utilization and security allocation, thereby introducing new parameter on security allocation in open VRP problem.

Citation

Pitchaimani, K., Zouadi, T., Lokesh, K.S. and Sreedharan, V.R. (2024), "Improving shuttle services quality in VUCA world: evidence from the IT industry", International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 41 No. 4, pp. 1165-1184. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJQRM-03-2023-0069