What you should know about queueing models to set staffing requirements in service systems

One traditional application of queueing models is to help set staffing requirements in service systems, but the way to do so is not entirely straightforward, largely because demand in service systems typically varies greatly by the time of day. This article discusses ways—old and new—to cope with that time-varying demand. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007

[1]  Ward Whitt,et al.  Server Staffing to Meet Time-Varying Demand , 1996 .

[2]  W. A. Massey,et al.  An Analysis of the Modified Offered-Load Approximation for the Nonstationary Erlang Loss Model , 1994 .

[3]  Ward Whitt,et al.  Coping with Time‐Varying Demand When Setting Staffing Requirements for a Service System , 2007 .

[4]  W. A. Massey,et al.  M t /G/∞ queues with sinusoidal arrival rates , 1993 .

[5]  Brad Cleveland,et al.  Call Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in Today's Dynamic Inbound Environment , 1999 .

[6]  WhittWard,et al.  A Staffing Algorithm for Call Centers with Skill-Based Routing , 2005 .

[7]  Ward Whitt,et al.  Peak congestion in multi-server service systems with slowly varying arrival rates , 1997, Queueing Syst. Theory Appl..

[8]  W. A. Massey,et al.  Uniform acceleration expansions for Markov chains with time-varying rates , 1998 .

[9]  Ward Whitt,et al.  Service-Level Differentiation in Many-Server Service Systems : A Solution Based on Fixed-Queue-Ratio Routing , 2007 .

[10]  Ward Whitt,et al.  Staffing of Time-Varying Queues to Achieve Time-Stable Performance , 2008, Manag. Sci..

[11]  D. L. Jagerman,et al.  Nonstationary blocking in telephone traffic , 1975, The Bell System Technical Journal.

[12]  Ward Whitt,et al.  A Staffing Algorithm for Call Centers with Skill-Based Routing , 2005, Manuf. Serv. Oper. Manag..

[13]  Avishai Mandelbaum,et al.  Statistical Analysis of a Telephone Call Center , 2005 .

[14]  Avishai Mandelbaum,et al.  Call Centers with Impatient Customers: Many-Server Asymptotics of the M/M/n + G Queue , 2005, Queueing Syst. Theory Appl..

[15]  Ward Whitt,et al.  The Physics of the Mt/G/∞ Queue , 1993, Oper. Res..

[16]  W. Whitt,et al.  Martingale proofs of many-server heavy-traffic limits for Markovian queues ∗ , 2007, 0712.4211.

[17]  Ward Whitt,et al.  Engineering Solution of a Basic Call-Center Model , 2005, Manag. Sci..

[18]  Avishai Mandelbaum,et al.  Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects , 2003, Manuf. Serv. Oper. Manag..

[19]  Brad Cleveland.  Call Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in Today's Dynamic Customer Contact Environment , 2006 .

[20]  Ward Whitt,et al.  Heavy-Traffic Limits for Queues with Many Exponential Servers , 1981, Oper. Res..

[21]  Avishai Mandelbaum,et al.  Designing a Call Center with Impatient Customers , 2002, Manuf. Serv. Oper. Manag..

[22]  W. Whitt.  The pointwise stationary approximation for M 1 / M 1 / s , 1991 .

[23]  P. Kolesar,et al.  The Pointwise Stationary Approximation for Queues with Nonstationary Arrivals , 1991 .