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，从顾客的角度来看，感知到的质量会影响产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，寻找具有成本效益的方法来减少服务能力有限的客户服务系统的拥塞；(2)设计最优的预防性维修计划和保修政策，以提高系统或产品在随机故障情况下的可靠性。*******第一个目标将通过以下方式实现：首先，继续研究竞争环境中服务公司的定价和能力联合决策；其次，在两个不同服务设施的随机服务系统中找到最优资源分配，以最小化总体运营和客户等待成本。第二个目标将通过分析免费维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。*******与传统的排队模型相比，本研究的创新之处在于使用新的排队模型来解决具有客户选择的多渠道服务系统和具有差异化服务器组（称为组服务器队列）的更一般的多服务器服务系统的拥塞问题。*******建议的研究与省级和联邦政府面临的挑战高度相关，例如省级运行的医疗保健系统、加拿大-美国边境过境系统和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的工作，有效地管理边境行动，平衡安全和公共安全需求与高效的旅行和贸易。公营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。当加拿大的政客们继续争论双层公共和私人医疗保健系统的可行性时（就像澳大利亚和英国已经存在的那样），没有量化的拥堵分析来评估这种系统。我的研究成果将对政府在可负担得起的医疗体系内设计可持续的、更短的或无需等待服务的能力做出重大贡献。此外，组服务器队列模型的结果可用于设计节能的大型数据中心在加拿大（如多伦多数据中心）。关于提高消费品可靠性的建议工作将有助于加拿大制造商（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.