Simulation-enabled Evaluation of Operational Strategies at Shield Illinois Depot for Efficient Disease Testing

To meet the state’s need for accessible, efficient COVID-19 testing during the pandemic, an initiative from the Illinois Department of Transportation was launched which is called SHIELD Illinois. Utilizing methodology pioneered by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), SHIELD Illinois launched a statewide, saliva-based COVID-19 testing network that reaches 1,700 schools, colleges and universities in Illinois. The depot (Darien, IL) was essential to this operation; it served as the central distribution hub daily routing thousands of samples to testing laboratories across the state. Depot operations were heavily impacted at the peak of their pandemic, owing to an extremely erratic arrival pattern of samples and a manual dispatching system which used spreadsheets for tracking and decision-making. It often leads to inefficiencies, and longer cycle times.

The aim of this research is to make depot operations more efficient along the SHIELD Illinois network through resource allocation and dispatching route optimization using a simulation-based model. This study explores and simulates routing strategies, assessing their impact on travel times, resource requirements and cycle times over an entire system from collection to results. By subjecting the design to numerous simulations tests, this research aims to obtain optimal dispatch routes or resource allocation that will make operation more efficient and consistent thereby minimizing delays.

The proposed simulation model will provide SHIELD Illinois with a systematic data-driven platform for managing demand changes and aligning resource allocation strategies. The findings of this research will provide valuable insights into future logistics for large-scale public health responses.