1 Corresponding author: Ettazi Haitam Email: haitam.ettazi@uit.ac.ma 391 Vol. 03, No. 4 (2021) 391-404, doi: 10.24874/PES03.04.003 Proceedings on Engineering Sciences www.pesjournal.net A SURVEY OF THE VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM IN-HOME HEALTH CARE SERVICES Ettazi Haitam 1 Rafalia Najat Abouchabaka Jaafar Keywords: Metaheuristics; Vehicle Routing Problem; Time Windows Constraints; Synchronization Constraints; Precedence constraints; Preferences A B S T R A C T In a transport Logistics problem, there can be a multitude of constraints that come into play such as vehicle/depot capacity constraints, time constraints… in this paper we will see first the works which relate mainly to the context of logistics in the home care and services. then we will details the main works existing related to routing problems that have similarities to the field we are interested in. in third, we will see the various and several resolution approaches such as exact, approximate or even hybrids resulting from these of methods from combinatorial optimization and operational research whose effectiveness has been proven on the logistics problem of transport in general. This study allows us to have a general overview of research opportunities not still explored. Therefore, we expose and investigate the problems addressed in the literature, to identify new emerging research perspectives in this context. © 2021 Published by Faculty of Engineeringg 1. INTRODUCTION Operations research (RO) goal is to solve decisions or optimization problems using mathematical and computer science tools. In this article, we are going to illustrate and study combinatorial optimization problems which are part of the transporting problem category. These problems are wide spread in logistics and there are numerous variants, usually designed by acronyms to distinguish between them. The motivation of studying such problems is the large field of practical applications and the economic and environmental implication. The transport fees represent for about 10 to 20% of merchandise financial prices by Toth & Vigo (2014). Optimization techniques usually allow developing efficient and flexible transportation systems responding to the life quality and economy preoccupations and to save 5 to 20% of transport costs. So, these techniques deemed to be very essential. The origin of logistics work in Health Systems can be linked to proposed door to door transportation service for the elderly or the disabled persons (Bodin & Sexton, 1986; Desrosiers et al, 1986, 1995). In many countries, the reason why local authorities have thought of setting up Dial-A-Ride services DARP can be partly attributed to the aging population, which has led to an increase in the number of patients suffering from functional disability, but also to a trend towards the development of ambulatory healthcare services. Later, Rousseau et al (2003, 2013) proposed a particular variant of the DARP where a special team offering specific Services is sent to the patient's residence before the arrival of the vehicle responsible for transporting them. This type of patients