Schedule Recovery: Unplanned Absences in Service Operations*

The U.S. service sector loses 2.3% of all scheduled labor hours to unplanned absences, but in some industries, the total cost of unplanned absences approaches 20% of payroll expense. The principal reasons for unscheduled absences (personal illness and family issues) are unlikely to abate anytime soon. Despite this, most labor scheduling systems continue to assume perfect attendance. This oversight masks an important but rarely addressed issue in services management: how to recover from short‐notice, short‐term reductions in planned capacity. In this article, we model optimal responses to unplanned employee absences in multi‐server queueing systems that provide discrete, pay‐per‐use services for impatient customers. Our goal is to assess the performance of alternate absence recovery strategies under various staffing and scheduling regimes. We accomplish this by first developing optimal labor schedules for hypothetical service environments with unreliable workers. We then simulate unplanned employee absences, apply an absence recovery model, and compute system profits. Our absence recovery model utilizes recovery strategies such as holdover overtime, call‐ins, and temporary workers. We find that holdover overtime is an effective absence recovery strategy provided sufficient reserve capacity (maximum allowable work hours minus scheduled hours) exists. Otherwise, less precise and more costly absence recovery methods such as call‐ins and temporary help service workers may be needed. We also find that choices for initial staffing and scheduling policies, such as planned overtime and absence anticipation, significantly influence the likelihood of successful absence recovery. To predict the effectiveness of absence recovery policies under alternate staffing/scheduling strategies and operating environments, we propose an index based on initial capacity reserves.     

THE "CONSULTING-YOUR-CONSULTANTS INTERVIEW": A FINAL NARRATIVE CONVERSATION WITH GRADUATING FAMILY THERAPY MASTERS' STUDENTS

In this article, we discuss a Masters' exit interview in which we use questions adopted from narrative therapy to celebrate the transition of Masters' students into the world of marital and family therapy professionals. We are finding that this process helps us underline our students' agency and competence. Also, since the process elevates students to the level of consultants during the interview, it invites them to see themselves as experts in their own right.     

HEURISTICS FOR INTEGER PROGRAMMING USING SURROGATE CONSTRAINTS

This paper proposes a class of surrogate constraint heuristics for obtaining approximate, near optimal solutions to integer programming problems. These heuristics are based on a simple framework that illuminates the character of several earlier heuristic proposals and provides a variety of new alternatives. The paper also proposes additional heuristics that can be used either to supplement the surrogate constraint procedures or to provide independent solution strategies. Preliminary computational results are reported for applying one of these alternatives to a class of nonlinear generalized set covering problems involving approximately 100 constraints and 300–500 integer variables. The solutions obtained by the tested procedure had objective function values twice as good as values obtained by standard approaches (e.g., reducing the best objective function values of other methods from 85 to 40 on the average. Total solution time for the tested procedure ranged from ten to twenty seconds on the CDC 6600.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Burck, C., & Daniel, G. (1995). Gender and family therapy .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Comas-Diaz, L., & Greene, B. (1994). Women of color: Integrating ethnic and gender identities in psychotherapy .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Hendrick, S. S. (1995). Close relationships: What couple therapists can learn .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Ackerman, M. J. (1995). Clinician's guide to child custody evaluations .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Andolfi, M., & Haber, R. (Eds.). (1994). Please help me with this family: Using consultants as resources in family therapy .
PROFESSIONAL BOOKS: Shapiro, E. R. (1994). Grief as a family process: A developmental approach to clinical practice .
GENERAL INTEREST BOOK: Nichols, M. P., (1995). The lost art of listening .
SELF-HELP BOOKS: O'Hanlon, B., & Hudson, P. (1995). Love is a verb: How to stop analyzing your relationship and start making it great!
SELF-HELP BOOKS: Hall, C. M. (1994). New families: Reviving and creating meaningful bonds .     

RESEARCH IN FAMILY THERAPY: A GRADUATE LEVEL COURSE

Training in family therapy research must move beyond traditional methods courses. This paper describes a five-unit course which (a) reviews the fundamentals of research methodology and grounds the student in the history of psychotherapy research in general; (b) gives an overview of family research through detailed analysis of major review articles; (c) covers instrumentation tools and techniques; (d) critically evaluates key investigations in the field; and (e) examines the challenges of the "new epistemologies" for family therapy research. Learning activities are described for each unit that engage the student in such a way that the learning of research might be enjoyable as well as interesting. The paper may also be employed as a guide for self-study in family therapy research.     

THE "PROBLEM" OF MICHAEL WHITE AND MICHEL FOUCAULT

The following essay proposes to look at the “problem” of the family therapist, Michael White, and the philosopher, Michel Foucault. The problem generally defined is the following: what are the key features of the relationship between Foucault and White? To answer this question, four areas need to be examined. First, it is important to look at the relationship between personal stories and cultural and institutional discourses. Second, there is a need to address the local use of power. Third, attention needs to be paid to the positions of Foucault and White vis-à-vis their respective disciplines. Lastly, the issue of the proper use of Foucault's methodology as applied to family therapy needs to be explored.     

Leave arrangements for parents: Overview and future outlook

This article provides an overview of statutory leave arrangements in the European Union (EU), Central European countries, and Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. It concludes with a brief review of recent parental leave research, and by considering future directions for policy and research. Paid maternity leave and paid or unpaid parental leave are now available throughout Europe--Western, Central and Eastern. Paternity leave has an increasing presence, but so far exists in only a minority of European countries. Except for Canada, leave policy in the four non-European countries lags behind Europe. Recent policy developments in the EU have been mainly in paternity and parental leave, with an emphasis on fathers. Nearly all countries remain far behind Sweden, which has the most effective leave policy for parents. Looking ahead, there is a need to adopt a holistic approach both in research and policy, for example understanding decision making as a complex process involving many influences and relationships and locating leave arrangements within a 'total policy package'. Future policy needs to move beyond a narrow focus on early parenthood to adopt a broader, life-course approach to increasing management of the use of time. El articulo aporta una perspectiva general do los acuerdos legales sobre el permiso laboral en la Unión Europea (UE), los páses centroeuropeos, en Australia, Canadá, Nueva Zelanda, y los Estados Unidos. Se concluye con una evaluación breve de las ultimas investigaciones sobre la baja por paternidad/maternidad, y se consideran orientaciones futuras para la política y la investigación. Ahora existe la baja pagada para madres, y la baja por paternidad/maternidad (pagado o no), por todo Europa--del oeste, central, y del este. La baja por paternidad esta en aumento, pero hasta ahora existe sólo en una minoría de los países europeos. Salvo en Canadá, la política del permiso en los cuatro demás países no europeos se queda atrás de la de Europa. Acontecimientos recientes en la UE se han tratado en gran parte de la paternidad y de la baja de para ambos padres, con énfasis en solo los padres. Casi todos los países se quedan muy atrás de Suecia que tiene la mas eficaz política de permiso para ambos padres. Para el futuro, será necesario adoptar un marco holístico, tanto en la investigación como en la política, por ejemplo entender la toma de decisiones como un proceso complejo con muchas influencias y relaciones, situando el orden del permiso dentro de un 'conjunto total de la política'. La política del futuro debe extenderse fuera de un enfoque estrecho en la paternidad temprano, para adoptar un enfoque más amplio que trata del manejar el uso del tiempo a lo largo de la vida.