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Creating Work Breaks from Available Idleness

Author

Listed:
  • Xu Sun

    (Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027)

  • Ward Whitt

    (Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027)

Abstract

We develop new rules for assigning available service representatives to customers in customer contact centers and other large-scale service systems in order to create effective work breaks for the service representatives from naturally available idleness. These are unplanned breaks occurring randomly over time. We consider both announced breaks as well as unannounced breaks. Our goal is to make the mean and variance of the interval between successive breaks suitably small. Given a target break duration, we propose assigning idle servers based on the elapsed time since their last break. We show that our proposed server-assignment rules are optimal for the many-server heavy-traffic (MSHT) fluid model. Extensive simulation experiments support the proposed server-assignment rules in practical cases and confirm the MSHT approximation formulas when the number of servers is very large.

Suggested Citation

  • Xu Sun & Ward Whitt, 2018. "Creating Work Breaks from Available Idleness," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 721-736, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormsom:v:20:y:2018:i:4:p:721-736
    DOI: 10.1287/msom.2017.0682
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James R. Jackson, 1957. "Networks of Waiting Lines," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 5(4), pages 518-521, August.
    2. Wyean Chan & Ger Koole & Pierre L'Ecuyer, 2014. "Dynamic Call Center Routing Policies Using Call Waiting and Agent Idle Times," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 16(4), pages 544-560, October.
    3. Ward Whitt, 1989. "Planning Queueing Simulations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(11), pages 1341-1366, November.
    4. Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 1911. "The Principles of Scientific Management," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number taylor1911.
    5. Avishai Mandelbaum & Petar Momčilović & Yulia Tseytlin, 2012. "On Fair Routing from Emergency Departments to Hospital Wards: QED Queues with Heterogeneous Servers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(7), pages 1273-1291, July.
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    Cited by:

    1. Dongyuan Zhan & Amy R. Ward, 2019. "Staffing, Routing, and Payment to Trade off Speed and Quality in Large Service Systems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 1738-1751, November.
    2. Xu, Shuling & Hall, Nicholas G., 2021. "Fatigue, personnel scheduling and operations: Review and research opportunities," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 295(3), pages 807-822.

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