BRIGE: Capacity allocation for networks of queues

BRIGE奖的研究目标是在路由网络的建模框架内研究服务容量和服务质量之间的权衡。服务能力将按人员配备水平衡量，而服务质量将按预期的客户延误情况衡量。将在随机处理网络的背景下开发新的方法，并将其与数值优化技术相结合。三个应用领域将提供一个测试平台的评估所提出的方法：电话呼叫中心，医疗保健系统，劳动力management.If成功的，这项研究的结果将有助于提高效率的业务流程在今天的一些竞争激烈的服务环境。由于服务人员的配置水平构成了许多大规模服务系统所涉费用的很大一部分，因此在这方面，系统地分配服务能力特别重要。用于过程管理和优化的标准软件使用模拟技术来分配服务能力，因此实际上仅使用计算昂贵的技术。拟议的研究议程确定和利用数学模型，可用于分配服务容量与模拟方法相结合，这将可能导致更有效的服务系统的容量分配规则。 该研究项目将与一项综合计划相结合，以吸引来自代表性不足群体的高中生从事工程职业。该计划的一个关键方面是开发一个计算机程序，在该程序中，学生们面临着管理游乐园排队的挑战。

The research objective of this BRIGE award is to investigate the trade-off between service capacity and quality of service within the modeling framework of queueing networks. Service capacity will be measured by staffing levels, while quality of service will be measured by expected customer delays. New methodology will be developed in the context of stochastic processing networks, which will be combined with numerical optimization techniques. Three application areas will provide a testbed for the evaluation of the proposed methods: telephone call centers, health care systems, and workforce management.If successful, the results of this research will help improve the efficiency of business processes in some of today's competitive service environments. Since the staffing levels of service personnel constitute a significant portion of the costs involved in many large-scale service systems, systematic allocation of service capacity is particularly relevant in this context. Standard software for process management and optimization uses simulation techniques to allocate service capacity, and therefore essentially only computationally expensive techniques are used in practice. The proposed research agenda identifies and exploits mathematical models that can be used for allocating service capacity in combination with simulation methods, which will potentially lead to more efficient capacity allocation rules for service systems. The research project will be integrated with a comprehensive plan to attract high school students from underrepresented groups to careers in engineering. A key aspect of this plan is the development of a computer program in which students are challenged to manage queues in an amusement park.