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，感知质量会影响商品和服务的提供者和接受者。 我的研究目的有两个方面：（1）通过随机建模和分析，找到降低有限服务能力的客户服务系统拥塞的成本有效方法;（2）设计最佳预防性维护计划和保修政策，以提高系统或产品的可靠性。第一个目标将实现第一，继续研究在竞争环境中的服务公司的定价和能力的联合决策，第二，通过找到最优的资源分配在两个不同的服务设施内的随机服务系统，以最小化的整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。**与经典的排队模型相比，该研究创新地使用了新的排队模型，解决了具有客户选择的多通道服务系统和具有区分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。拟议的研究与省级和联邦级政府面临的挑战高度相关，例如省级医疗保健系统，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有效管理边境业务，平衡安全和公共安全需求与有效旅行和贸易的工作。关于公共和私营服务系统的竞争和协调的工作与加拿大的保健系统密切相关。虽然加拿大的政治家们继续辩论双层公共和私人医疗保健系统的可行性（因为他们已经存在于澳大利亚和英国），没有定量的拥挤分析评估这样一个系统存在。我的研究成果将为政府在负担得起的医疗保健系统中设计可持续，更短或无需等待的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加拿大的节能大型数据中心（例如，多伦多数据中心）。 拟议的消费品可靠性改进工作将有助于加拿大制造商（例如，庞巴迪），以提高产品的可靠性，在竞争激烈的全球市场。

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.