We develop a method to estimate the capacity of agents who answer e-mail in a contact center, given aggregate historical data that have been distorted both by constraints on work availability and by internal incentives to slow down when true capacity exceeds demand. We use the capacity estimate...

Two single-product firms with different quality levels and fixed limited capacities engage in sequential price competition in an essentially deterministic model where customers have heterogeneous valuations for both products. We develop conditions under which the leader (she) can take strategic...

Aubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggest that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that because of what we term the labor illusion, when websites engage in...

With the advent of the current global recession, many companies are trying to remain competitive and reducing inventory shrinkage, especially through employee theft deterrence, are become more popular. Through multivariate statistical analysis of 212 managerial employees of both service and...

We study the problem of setting nurse staffing levels in hospital operating rooms when there is uncertainty about daily workload. The workload is the number of operating room hours used by a medical specialty on a given day to perform surgical procedures. Variable costs consist of wages at a...

We consider the problem of balancing two competing objectives in the pursuit of efficient management of operating rooms in a hospital: providing surgeons with predictable, reliable access to the operating room and maintaining high utilization of capacity. The common solution to the first problem...

We develop a finite-horizon discrete-time constrained Markov decision process (MDP) to model diagnostic decisions after mammography where we maximize the total expected quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) of a patient under resource constraints. We use clinical data to estimate the parameters of...

Despite service supply chain is emerging as a new research hot topic, the systematical theoretical framework of service supply chain management still remains unexplored. The intent of this research is to examine the research progress of service supply chain management, address some key problems...

Presents the buygrid model, taken from industrial marketing, and extends it to include logistical service operations. Applies the model to selected logistical research literature. The effect of this perspective is to recognize multiple sets or segments of service offerings and performance...