Paper Info
Title
Optimal selection of contracts and work shifts in multi-skill call centers
Abstract
This paper deals with the problem of finding the most suitable contracts to be used when hiring the operators of a call center and deciding their optimal working schedule, to optimize the trade-off between the service level provided to the customers and the cost of the personnel. In a previous paper (Cordone et al. 2011), we proposed a heuristic method to quickly build an integer solution from the solution of the continuous relaxation of an integer linear programming model. In this paper, we generalize that model to take into account a much wider class of working contracts, allowing heterogeneous shift patterns, as well as legal constraints related to continuously active working environments. Since our original rounding heuristic cannot be extended to the new model, due to its huge size and to the involved correlations between different sets of integer variables, we introduce a more sophisticated heuristic based on decomposition and on a multi-level iterative structure. We compare the results of this heuristic with those of a Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure, both on real-world instances and on realistic random instances.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1007/s13675-013-0019-7
EURO J. Computational Optimization
Keywords
Field
DocType
Workforce management, Call center optimization, Integer linear programming, GRASP, 90C06 Large-scale problems, 90C11 Mixed integer programming, 90C27 Combinatorial optimization, 90B70 Theory of organizations, manpower planning
Integer,Mathematical optimization,Heuristic,Service level,GRASP,Computer science,Rounding,Integer programming,Operator (computer programming),Greedy randomized adaptive search procedure
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
2
4
2192-4414
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
1
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Roberto Cordone131028.87
Pierre Hosteins2505.14
Giovanni Righini352033.90
paolo ravizza400.34
andrea piselli500.34