Strategic Idleness and Dynamic Scheduling in an Open-Shop Service Network: Case Study and Analysis

Opher Baron (), Oded Berman (), Dmitry Krass () and Jianfu Wang ()
Additional contact information
Opher Baron: Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E6, Canada
Oded Berman: Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E6, Canada
Dmitry Krass: Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E6, Canada
Jianfu Wang: Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 2017, vol. 19, issue 1, 52-71

Abstract: This 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.

Keywords: strategic idleness; dynamic scheduling policy; open shop; healthcare; service network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/msom.2016.0591 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormsom:v:19:y:2017:i:1:p:52-71

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().