Title
Strategic Idleness and Dynamic Scheduling in an Open-Shop Service Network: Case Study and Analysis
Abstract
AbstractThis paper, motivated by a collaboration with a healthcare service provider, focuses on stochastic open-shop service networks with two objectives: more traditional macrolevel measures such as minimizing total system time or minimizing total number of tardy customers and the atypical microlevel measure of reducing the incidents of excessively long waits at any workstation within the process. While work-conserving policies are optimal for macrolevel measures, scheduling policies with strategic idleness SI might be helpful for microlevel measures. Using the empirical data obtained from the service provider, we provide statistical evidence that SI is used by its schedulers to manage the macro-and microlevel measures. However, the company has no specific rules on implementing SI and the schedulers make decisions based on their own experience. Our primary goal is to develop a systematic framework for the joint usage of SI with dynamic scheduling policies DSPs. We suggest to use threshold-based policies to intelligently combine SI and DSPs and show that the resulting policies provide an efficient way to simultaneously address both macro-and microlevel measures. We build two simulation models: one based on empirical data and one based on a randomly generated open-shop network. We use both models to demonstrate that an open-shop service network can be systematically and effectively managed to deliver improved service level by using SI.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1287/msom.2016.0591
Periodicals
Keywords
Field
DocType
strategic idleness,dynamic scheduling policy,open shop,healthcare,service network
Health care,Open shop,Economics,Service level,Scheduling (computing),Workstation,Service provider,System time,Dynamic priority scheduling,Operations management
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
19
1
1526-5498
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.35
16
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Opher Baron114514.64
O. Berman21604231.36
Dmitry Krass348382.08
Jianfu Wang4102.38