Refining Square-Root Safety Staffing by Expanding Erlang C

A. J. E. M. Janssen (), J. S. H. van Leeuwaarden () and Bert Zwart ()
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A. J. E. M. Janssen: Eindhoven University of Technology and EURANDOM, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
J. S. H. van Leeuwaarden: Eindhoven University of Technology and EURANDOM, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Bert Zwart: H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332

Operations Research, 2011, vol. 59, issue 6, 1512-1522

Abstract: We apply a new corrected diffusion approximation for the Erlang C formula to determine staffing levels in cost minimization and constraint satisfaction problems. These problems are motivated by large customer contact centers that are modeled as an M / M / s queue with s the number of servers or agents. The proposed staffing levels are refinements of the celebrated square-root safety-staffing rule and have the appealing property that they are as simple as the conventional square-root safety-staffing rule. In addition, we provide theoretical support for the empirical fact that square-root safety-staffing works well for moderate-sized systems.

Keywords: call centers; QED regime; corrected diffusion approximations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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