CAREER: Design and Analysis of Differentiated Services

该学院早期职业发展（Career）计划奖将为技术先进的服务运营中差异化服务的设计、控制、绩效分析和定价开发新方法。服务差异化是大多数现代服务系统运作的基础，因为它允许通过不同质量等级的服务类别来满足企业和客户的不同需求。此外，它还支持这些服务的经济可行性。本提案将解决的关键问题示例包括：1)一个大型电话呼叫中心应该使用多少座席来满足跨多个客户类别的服务水平约束？2)互联网信息服务的定价应如何考虑标准质量等级（例如，“尽力而为”和“保证”连接）？3)网络托管服务提供商应如何验证和监控其电子商务客户所要求的服务水平的异质混合？这项调查的范围从模型的基本公式和分析，到与行业伙伴合作的更多应用工作。研究议程是广泛和跨学科的，整合了统计学，经济学，随机控制，排队理论，优化和模拟的思想。在这个奖项中开发的方法应该导致管理洞察力和改进的问题解决技术，这些技术可能会影响在服务部门经营的企业的竞争优势。与相关科学领域的重要协同作用将在应用概率、统计、风险管理和收入管理等领域产生贡献。研究结果将编入教材和新课程，并将广泛分发给学术界和工业界。除了支持PI的研究外，该项目还将支持博士生并促进与工业界的研究互动。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Progam award will develop new methods for design, control, performance analysis, and pricing of differentiated services in technologically advanced service operations. Service differentiation is fundamental to the operation of most modern service systems as it allows diverse requirements of businesses and customers to be met by means of service classes with varying quality grades. In addition, it supports the economic viability of such services. Examples of key questions that will be addressed by this proposal include the following: 1) How many agents should be used to staff a large telephone call center to meet service level constraints across multiple customer classes? 2) How should pricing of Internet-based information services account for standard quality grades (e.g., ``best-effort'' and ``guaranteed'' connections)? 3) How should web-hosting service providers verify and monitor a heterogenous mix of service levels dictated by their e-business clients? This investigation ranges from fundamental formulation and analysis of models, to more applied work in collaboration with industry partners. The research agenda is broad and interdisciplinary, integrating ideas from statistics, economics, stochastic control, queueing theory, optimization, and simulation.Methods developed in this award should lead to managerial insights and improved problem solving techniques that can potentially affect the competitive advantage of enterprises operating in the service sector. Important synergies with related scientific fields should produce contributions in the areas of applied probability, statistics, risk management, and revenue management. Results will be incorporatedinto teaching materials and new courses, and will be widely disseminated to academia and industry. In addition to supporting the PI's research, this project will also support doctoral students and foster research interactions with industry.