The interface between an emergency department and internal wards is often a hospital's bottleneck. Motivated by this interaction in an anonymous hospital, we analyze queueing systems with heterogeneous server pools, where the pools represent the wards, and the servers are beds. Our queueing...

A call center is a service network in which agents provide telephone-based services. Customers that seek these services are delayed in tele-queues.<p> <p>This paper summarizes an analysis of a unique record of call center operations. The data comprise a complete operational history of a small banking...</p></p>

This paper develops methods to determine appropriate staffing levels in call centers and other many-server queueing systems with time-varying arrival rates. The goal is to achieve targeted time-stable performance, even in the presence of significant time variation in the arrival rates. The main...

We study large-scale service systems with multiple customer classes and many statistically identical servers. The following question is addressed: How many servers are required (staffing) and how does one match them with customers (control) to minimize staffing cost, subject to class-level...

We consider a multiserver service system with general nonstationary arrival and service-time processes in which s(t), the number of servers as a function of time, needs to be selected to meet projected loads. We try to choose s(t) so that the probability of a delay (before beginning service)...

A "smart" customer arrives at an M/G/1 queue. While every other arrival joins the system unconditionally, our customer is allowed to choose among three alternatives: (i) he may Enter the queue and stay there until his service is completed, (ii) he may Leave the system right away, or (iii) he may...

We view each station in a Jackson network as a queue of tasks, of a particular type, which are to be processed by the associated specialized server. A complete pooling of queues, into a single queue, and servers, into a single server, gives rise to an M/PH/1 queue, where the server is flexible...

We address the modeling and analysis of abandonments from a queue that is invisible to its occupants. Such queues arise in remote service systems, notably the Internet and telephone call centers; hence, we refer to them as tele-queues. A basic premise of this paper is that customers adapt their...

Telephone call centers are an integral part of many businesses, and their economic role is significant and growing. They are also fascinating sociotechnical systems in which the behavior of customers and employees is closely intertwined with physical performance measures. In these environments...