Journal
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH
Volume 167, Issue 2, Pages 349-369Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2004.03.024
Keywords
queue control; logistics; cross-trained workers; front room and back room operations; heuristics; queueing
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In this paper we consider a retail service facility with cross-trained workers who can switch between the front room and the back room depending on the size of the queue in the front room. Two problems are presented. In the first problem, given a fixed number of cross-trained workers the objective is to find optimal switching points so that the expected customer waiting time is minimized subject to a back room service level constraint. In the second problem the number of workers is also a decision variable and the objective is to minimize it subject to both front room and back room service level constraints. The paper includes an analysis of the model and based on it several heuristics are suggested. Computational analysis with the recommended heuristics is presented and comparison to optimal solutions derived by complete enumeration shows excellent results. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available