Improving Operations in Services and Manufacturing Using Queuing Models

在制造业和服务业的许多应用程序中，排队模型都适合为决策提供指导。本文的长期目标是对排队理论的知识和应用做出贡献。我将专注于提高我们对排队模型及其应用程序的理解，以解决医疗保健和制造公司中的问题，在这些公司中，等待时间和流程时间非常重要。通过为不同的客户类别提供不同的服务水平，可以改善许多企业的运营。然而，从理论的角度来看，求解具有多个客户类别的排队系统是非常困难的。我最近在这个领域的研究可以应用于解决大量这样的排队模型。在医疗保健领域，长时间的等待不仅会导致病人不开心，也会导致病人不健康。考虑到在医疗保健服务中管理等待时间的重要性，通常使用分诊和优先排序。也就是说，紧急病人应该在几分钟内就诊，而不那么紧急的病人可能要等上几个小时。我将建议在医疗保健应用（如血库）中采取有效的控制政策。这些政策可以提高加拿大和其他国家的医疗保健质量，甚至延长患者的寿命。有效的供应链控制对许多生产企业和零售商的竞争力至关重要。控制供应链的模型包括原材料的供应、根据预测制定的生产计划，以及产品的分销和分配给零售商。我将在考虑流时间的同时描述SCs的性能。这项工作有可能导致新的SCs控制政策。总的来说，我的研究项目的影响将通过对方法论的贡献、顶级出版物、对高素质人员的培训、吸引更多的研究人员使用我们开发的方法、从这些研究中产生的见解以及在应用中应用这些见解和模型来衡量。

Queueing models are appropriate in providing guidelines on decisions in many applications in both the manufacturing and the service industries. The long term goal of this proposal is to contribute to the knowledge on queueing theory and enhance its application. I will focus on improving our understanding of queueing models and their applications to solve problems in healthcare and manufacturing companies, where waiting- and flow-times are important. The operations of many businesses can be improved by providing different service levels to different customer classes. However, from a theoretical point of view, solving queueing systems with several customers' classes is very difficult. My recent research in this area can be applied to solve a wide array of such queueing models. In healthcare, long waiting times may result not only in unhappy patients, but also unhealthy ones. Given the importance of managing waiting times in healthcare services triage and prioritization are often used. That is, emergency patients should be seen within minutes, whereas less urgent patients may wait for hours. I will suggest effective control policies in healthcare applications, such as blood banks. Such policies can improve the quality of healthcare and even increase longevity of patients in Canada and other countries. Effective supply chain (SC) control is critical to the competitiveness of many production firms and retailers. Models for the control of SCs encompass the supply of raw material, the production plan in view of forecasts, and the product distribution and allocation to retailers. I will characterize the performance of SCs while considering flow-times. This work has the potential to lead to novel controls policies for SCs. Overall, the impact of my research program would be measured by contributions to methodology, top tier publications, training for highly qualified personal, attracting additional researchers to use the methodologies we develop, the insight generated from these studies, and applying these insights and models in applications.