SYNERGISTIC MODELING OF CALL CENTER OPERATIONS

We synergistically apply queueing theory, integer programming, and stochastic simula-tion to determine an optimal staffing policy for a repair call handling center. A station-ary Markovian queueing model is employed to determine minimal staffing levels for a sequence of time intervals with varying call volumes and mean handling times. These staffing requirements populate an integer program model for determining the mix of call agent shifts that will achieve service quality standards at minimum cost. Since the ana-lytical modeling requires simplifying assumptions, expected performance of the optimal staffing policy is evaluated using stochastic simulation. Computational efficiency of the simulation is improved dramatically by employing the queueing model to generate an analytic control variate. Copyright © 2006 D. C. Dietz and J. G. Vaver. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, dis-tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1