We consider the robust design and control of call center systems with flexible interactive voice response (IVR) systems. In a typical call center equipped with an IVR system, customers are handled first by the IVR system, which is a computerized system that often enables customers to self-serve....

In diagnostic services, agents typically need to weigh the benefit of running an additional test and improving the accuracy of diagnosis against the cost of delaying the provision of services to others. Our paper analyzes how to dynamically manage this accuracy/congestion trade-off. To that end,...

Should a firm charge on a per-use basis or sell subscriptions when its service experiences congestion? Queueing-based models of pricing primarily focus on charging a fee per use for the service, in part because per-use pricing enables the firm to regulate congestion--raising the per-use price...

This paper develops a framework and proposes heuristic dynamic policies for scheduling patient appointments, taking into account the fact that patients may cancel or not show up for their appointments. In a simulation study that considers a model clinic, which is created using data obtained from...

We consider an appointment-based service system (e.g., an outpatient clinic) for which appointments need to be scheduled before the service session starts. Patients with scheduled appointments may or may not show up for their appointments. The service of scheduled patients can be interrupted by...

Empirical studies showed that many types of network traffic exhibit long-range dependence (LRD), i.e., burstiness on a wide variety of time-scales. Given that traffic streams are indeed endowed with LRD properties, a next question is: what is their impact on network performance? To assess this...

We deal with a cost allocation problem arising from sharing a medical service in the presence of queues. We use a standard queuing theory model in a context with several medical procedures, a certain demand of treatment and a maximum average waiting time guarantee set by the government. We show...

In this paper, we propose a queueing model to describe traffic breakdown phenomena caused by perturbations of on-ramp merging vehicles. In congested mainline traffic flow, we assume that a merging vehicle will trigger a jam queue formulation. If this jam queue cannot dissipate before the next...

Empirical studies showed that many types of network traffic exhibit long-range dependence (LRD),i.e., burstiness on a wide variety of time-scales. Given that traffic streams are indeed endowed withLRD properties, a next question is: what is their impact on network performance? To assess...

We consider a queue fed by a large number, say n, of on-off sources with generally distributed on-and off-times. The queueing resources are scaled by n: the buffer is B=nb and link rate is C=nc.The model is versatile: it allows us to model both long range dependent traffic (by using heavy-tailed...