Intellectual Contribution by Robert Saltzman

Contribution Title

A Manager-Friendly Platform for Simulation Modeling and Analysis of Call Center Queueing Systems

Publication

Proceedings of the 2004 Winter Simulation Conference

Co-author

Vijay Mehrotra

Year

2004

Description

Call center operational performance is measured largely through queue times and customer abandonment rates, and thus managers have an acute need to understand how both management policies and stochastic factors affect these performance statistics. Simulation is an excellent vehicle for examining these relationships, but a lack of program-ming ability can be a barrier that prevents call center man-agers from making use of such models. To address this problem, we have developed a user-friendly Excel inter-face for a dynamic discrete event simulation model. The underlying model is a general queuing system for which analytical results are often unavailable, and the Excel inter-face enables managers to interactively specify a wide range of system parameters and analyze results, all without ex-posing them to the simulation model's components. Based on input from call center operations managers, we have also been able to utilize this framework to ask, and answer, some important empirical questions.

Complete Citation

Saltzman, R. and V. Mehrotra, "A Manager-Friendly Platform for Simulation Modeling and Analysis of Call Center Queueing Systems," Proceedings of the 2004 Winter Simulation Conference, R .G. Ingalls, M. D. Rossetti, J. S. Smith, and B. A. Peters, eds., pp. 466-473, December 2004.

Website

See Faculty: Robert Saltzman