Improving Operations in Services and Manufacturing Using Queuing Models

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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.