Simulation and optimization for call centers management

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Call centers employ hundreds of thousands people in Canada and involve huge amounts of money. Most centers operate in highly uncertain (stochastic) environments.  Their management is complex and is a promising and rapidly growing area of application for operations research. The aim of this project is to develop mathematical models, optimization algorithms, and simulation and optimization software for better management of telephone call centers.  The first and primary research direction concerns multi-skill call centers, where different types of agents with various combinations of abilities handle different types of calls.  We will develop and implement simulation models and tools, and optimization algorithms for staffing, scheduling, and call routing. The second direction is to develop algorithms and tools for staffing, scheduling, call routing, and outbound dialling for blend centers, as well as centers mixing multiskill and blend.  The third direction concerns simulation tools in Java.  Our goal is to develop the most efficient, flexible, reliable, and general simulation tool on the market.  The fourth direction is the modeling of arrival processes and abandonment behavior and the development of improved forecasting methods for the call volumes, over short-term and medium-term horizons.