Performance Analysis and Optimization in Stochastic Service and Manufacturing Systems with Customer Choices

在购买产品或服务时存在不确定性，从客户的角度来看，感知的质量影响到商品和服务的提供者和接受者。本文的研究目的有两个方面：(1)通过随机建模和分析，找到降低服务能力受限的客户服务系统拥堵的有效方法；(2)设计最优预防性维修计划和保修策略，以提高随机故障下系统或产品的可靠性。第一个目标将通过继续研究竞争环境下服务企业的定价和能力的联合决策来实现，第二个目标是通过在两个不同的服务设施内找到随机服务系统中的最优资源分配，以最小化总体运营和顾客等待成本。第二个目标将通过分析免修保修政策与预防性维护计划相结合的成本行为并优化所售产品的保修政策来实现。*与经典排队模型相比，所提出的研究创新地使用了新的排队模型来解决具有客户选择的多渠道服务系统以及具有不同服务器组的更一般的多服务器服务系统(称为组-服务器队列)的拥塞问题。*所提出的研究与省政府和联邦政府所面临的挑战高度相关，例如省办的医疗保健系统，加拿大-美国边境口岸系统，以及加拿大机场的安全检查站。例如，研究结果可以支持加拿大边境服务局等机构有效管理边境行动的工作，平衡安全和公共安全需求与高效的旅行和贸易。公共和私营服务系统的竞争和协调工作与加拿大的医疗保健系统高度相关。尽管加拿大的政界人士仍在讨论公共和私营两级医疗体系的可行性(因为澳大利亚和英国已经存在这样的体系)，但目前还没有对这种体系进行评估的定量拥堵分析。我的研究成果将对政府在负担得起的医疗体系内设计可持续、更短或不等待服务的能力做出重大贡献。此外，群组服务器队列模型的结果可用于加拿大的节能大型数据中心(如多伦多数据中心)的设计。拟议的消费品可靠性改进工作将帮助加拿大制造商(例如庞巴迪)在竞争激烈的全球市场中提高产品可靠性。

Uncertainties exist when purchasing a product or service and the perceived quality from a customer's perspective impacts both the provider and receiver of the goods and services. The aim of my research is two-fold: (1) to find cost effective ways to reduce congestion of customer service systems with limited service capacity via stochastic modeling and analysis; and (2) to design the optimal preventive maintenance schedule and warranty policy to improve the reliability of the system or product subject to random failures.*******The first aim will be achieved by first, continuing research on joint decision of pricing and capacity for service firms in a competitive environment and second, by finding the optimal resource allocation in a stochastic service system within two different service facilities to minimize the overall operating and customer waiting cost. The second aim will be achieved by analyzing the cost behaviour of a free-repair warranty policy combined with a preventive maintenance schedule and optimizing a warranty policy for the product sold.*******Compared with classical queuing models, the proposed research is innovative in its use of new queuing models addressing the congestion issues for multi-channel service systems with customer choice and for more general multi-server service systems with differentiated server groups (called group-server queues).*******The proposed research is highly relevant to the challenges faced by governments at the Provincial and Federal level such as the provincially run healthcare systems, Canada-US border crossing systems, and Canadian airports' security checkpoints. For example, research findings can support the work of agencies such as Canada Border Services Agency in managing border operations effectively, balancing security and public safety needs with efficient travel and trade. Work on competition and coordination of public and private service systems is highly relevant to Canada's healthcare system. While politicians in Canada continue to debate the viability of a two-tier public and private healthcare system (as they already exists in Australia and the UK), no quantitative congestion analysis for evaluating such a system exists. Outputs from my research will make a significant contribution to the ability of governments to design sustainable, shorter or no waiting for services within an affordable healthcare system. In addition, the results of group server queue model can be used to design energy-efficient large data centers in Canada (e.g., Toronto Data Centre). The proposed work on reliability improvement for consumer products will help Canadian manufacturers (e.g., Bombardier) to improve the product reliability in a highly competitive global market.