How Long Should a Customer Wait for Service?

A major concern for service managers is the determination of how long a customer should wait to be served. Services, due to the customer's direct interaction with the process, must face a trade-off between minimizing the cost of having a customer wait and the cost of providing good service. A total cost model is presented for determining how long a customer should wait when these two conflicting cost components are considered. An integral part of this model includes a measure of customer satisfaction with waiting time which is used to develop a waiting cost function. The model is then applied to a major fast food chain, using data collected at several locations. Analysis of the data reveals that the “ideal” waiting time for this firm is significantly less than the current corporate waiting time policy. Thus, as indicated by the model, a corporate policy change is recommended to provide much faster service. The adoption of such a policy would result in increased labor costs, and would simultaneously increase the firm's overall profits. Although appearing contradictory, increases in current labor costs and long-term profits are both possible when management takes the long-range perspective suggested in this paper.     

An Experimental Comparison of Dispatching Rules for Field Service Support*

Field service repair management is increasing in importance as “high tech” machines such as computers, communication systems, and copy machines are becoming more popular and more widely disbursed geographically. Complicating the management of these systems are response time performance guarantees (e.g., 8-hour response time), which are a popular marketing tool for many field service businesses [21]. These response time), guarantees especially complicate the field service dispatching problem. With response time guarantees, dispatchers must consider travel times and other issues to determine which call should be assigned to an available technician. This research proposes several dispatching rules that might be applied for dispatching sequential-trip technicians in this environment and compares these rules in a simulation experiment to determine which rule is best in terms of average tardiness. The proposed composite travel time-expiration time rule was found to be the best on average tardiness performance and on all other tardiness-related measures. Given the increased importance of tardiness performance in field service organizations, the proposed composite rule appears to have promise.     

中国健康与精神健康社会工作制度百年历史变迁与历史规律研究

1921年9月15—22日,新协和医学院开幕典礼具有划时代、里程碑、国际性、多样性的中国和世界历史意义,既标志中国现代西医教育和西医临床诊疗服务开端,又标志中国现代医院与医务、健康与精神健康社会工作实务体系建设元年,拉开中国现代健康与精神健康社会工作实务体系建设百年历史序幕。本文从制度社会史和历史制度主义视角,利用文献回顾、历史-比较研究、内容分析和理论建构等方法,首次将1921—2021年百年历史划分为四个时期,其中,1840—1920年是西医传入和医疗慈善、医疗救助和健康公益时期;1921—1949年是现代医院与医务、健康与精神健康社会工作实务体系奠基并迅猛发展时期;1950—1977年是社会学与专业社会工作实务中断停止、销声匿迹时期;1978—2021 年是中国现代医院与医务、健康与精神健康社会工作实务体系恢复重建、结构转型、全面发展,社会工作专业重新专业化、理论化、政策化、本土化和制度化的时期。每个历史时期均具有若干鲜明和突出的时代特征。目的是清晰描绘中国现代健康与精神健康社会工作实务体系建设百年历史变迁的总体图画。更重要的是,本文首次分析中国健康、精神健康社会工作实务体系发展影响因素与社会成因,首次全面、系统、历史、客观地总结中国健康、精神健康社会工作实务体系百年历史经验、教训和客观规律,旨在为实现第二个百年目标,为健康中国、法治中国和福利中国制度建设,为满足全民性、普惠性美好生活需要提供专业社工实务体系与现代社会福利制度智慧、规律。