Optimized appointment scheduling

Benjamin Kemper, Chris A.J. Klaassen and Michel Mandjes

European Journal of Operational Research, 2014, vol. 239, issue 1, 243-255

Abstract: In service systems, in order to balance the server’s idle times and the customers’ waiting times, one may fix the arrival times of the customers beforehand in an appointment schedule. We propose a procedure for determining appointment schedules in such a D/G/1-type of system by sequentially minimizing the per-customer expected loss. Our approach provides schedules for any convex loss function; for the practically relevant cases of the quadratic and absolute value loss functions appealing closed-form results are derived. Importantly, our approach does not impose any conditions on the service time distribution; it is even allowed that the customers’ service times have different distributions.

Keywords: Appointment scheduling; Utility functions; Queues (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:239:y:2014:i:1:p:243-255

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2014.05.027

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