It is well known that flexibility can be created in manufacturing and service operations by using multipurpose production sources such as cross-trained labor, flexible machines, or flexible factories. We focus on flexible service centers, such as inbound call centers with cross-trained agents,...

We describe a method to find low cost shift schedules with a time-varying service level that is always above a specified minimum. Most previous approaches used a two-step procedure: (1) determine staffing requirements and (2) find a minimum cost schedule that provides the required staffing in...

Using administrative data for high-priority calls in Calgary, Alberta, we estimate how ambulance travel times depend on distance. We find that a logarithmic transformation produces symmetric travel-time distributions with heavier tails than those of a normal distribution. Guided by nonparametric...