The Modern Call Center: A Multi‐Disciplinary Perspective on Operations Management Research

Call centers are an increasingly important part of today's business world, employing millions of agents across the globe and serving as a primary customer‐facing channel for firms in many different industries. Call centers have been a fertile area for operations management researchers in several domains, including forecasting, capacity planning, queueing, and personnel scheduling. In addition, as telecommunications and information technology have advanced over the past several years, the operational challenges faced by call center managers have become more complicated. Issues associated with human resources management, sales, and marketing have also become increasingly relevant to call center operations and associated academic research. In this paper, we provide a survey of the recent literature on call center operations management. Along with traditional research areas, we pay special attention to new management challenges that have been caused by emerging technologies, to behavioral issues associated with both call center agents and customers, and to the interface between call center operations and sales and marketing. We identify a handful of broad themes for future investigation while also pointing out several very specific research opportunities.     

辽西地区旅游产品构成及结构优化

针对辽西地区旅游业发展相对缓慢的现状,从旅游产品的核心角度--旅游景观出发,对该地区旅游资源 和旅游产品构成进行了系统分析,并在此基础上,提出了旅游产品的结构优化和主要措施。     

Optimization of problems with multivariate multiple functional responses: A case study in air quality

Optimization of multi-response problems is a popular subject in the literature. However, the problem becomes complicated when the responses are functional due to the existence of signal factors. In this article, we have proposed a combined index to optimize multivariate multiple functional responses by considering functional specification limits and a target. The relation among the responses and controllable factors is characterized by polynomial equations to consider the curvature of the response functions. The validity of the proposed method is checked by a simulation example. To show the applicability of the proposed method, a real case about Tehran air quality is analyzed. Latitude and longitude are considered to be signal factors, and different pollutant values are responses of the experiment. Government policies in each time interval are considered as controllable factors. Finally, an optimization algorithm is used to find the best decisions for government policies.     

On the bivariate weighted exponential distribution based on the generalized exponential distribution

In this paper, we introduce a bivariate weighted exponential distribution based on the generalized exponential distribution. This class of distributions generalizes the bivariate distribution with weighted exponential marginals (BWE). We derive different properties of this new distribution. It is a four-parameter distribution, and the maximum-likelihood estimator of unknown parameters cannot be obtained in explicit forms. One data set has been re-analyzed and it is observed that the proposed distribution provides better fit than the BWE distribution.     

基于EVA与经营风险偏好的供应链鲁棒优化模型

在由一个制造商和多个外部供应商构成的多产品、多阶段供应链中,将经济增加值（EVA）作为体现价值创造的绩效指标,并考虑决策者的经营风险偏好,采用已知概率的离散情景描述资本成本与需求的波动情况,利用鲁棒随机规划方法,建立了以价值创造为目标的供应链鲁棒优化模型。应用分析的结果表明,模型能够将供应链的绩效与风险管理结合起来,减少资本成本与需求不确定对目标值的影响,得到具有鲁棒性的最优解,而且越是风险厌恶型的决策者越会为了保持较低的经营风险而放弃较大的EVA值。同时,决策者可选择不同的权重系数侧重于解鲁棒或模型鲁棒,保证供应链运作的鲁棒性,实现价值创造的目标。     

海铁联运铁路集装箱定价与运营优化

铁路部门的改革加快了海铁联运的发展。本文从铁路运输经营人的角度研究铁路与公路运输竞争的情况下,铁路运输服务的定价和运营优化问题。首先利用顾客价值理论分析客户对铁路运输的需求和价格的关系。其次构建以利润最大化为目标的运营优化模型,并设计启发式算法求解。通过与遗传算法比较验证了算法的有效性。然后,得出不同价格水平下的最优班列路线、发班次数以及发班时间。结果表明对定价和运营策略的联合优化能够为铁路运输经营人带来最大的利润。     

Spatial Optimization of Future Urban Development with Regards to Climate Risk and Sustainability Objectives

Future development in cities needs to manage increasing populations, climate‐related risks, and sustainable development objectives such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Planners therefore face a challenge of multidimensional, spatial optimization in order to balance potential tradeoffs and maximize synergies between risks and other objectives. To address this, a spatial optimization framework has been developed. This uses a spatially implemented genetic algorithm to generate a set of Pareto‐optimal results that provide planners with the best set of trade‐off spatial plans for six risk and sustainability objectives: (i) minimize heat risks, (ii) minimize flooding risks, (iii) minimize transport travel costs to minimize associated emissions, (iv) maximize brownfield development, (v) minimize urban sprawl, and (vi) prevent development of greenspace. The framework is applied to Greater London (U.K.) and shown to generate spatial development strategies that are optimal for specific objectives and differ significantly from the existing development strategies. In addition, the analysis reveals tradeoffs between different risks as well as between risk and sustainability objectives. While increases in heat or flood risk can be avoided, there are no strategies that do not increase at least one of these. Tradeoffs between risk and other sustainability objectives can be more severe, for example, minimizing heat risk is only possible if future development is allowed to sprawl significantly. The results highlight the importance of spatial structure in modulating risks and other sustainability objectives. However, not all planning objectives are suited to quantified optimization and so the results should form part of an evidence base to improve the delivery of risk and sustainability management in future urban development.     

Routing in a queueing system with two heterogeneous servers in speed and in quality of resolution

Heterogeneous servers, in manufacturing and service systems, may have different speeds and different quality levels for the provided service or good For a two-server queueing model, we formulate the job routing problem for minimizing the stationary weighted sum of the expected time spent in the system and the number of unsatisfied customers per time unit. Using a Markov decision process approach, we prove that the optimal routing policy of jobs to service is a threshold policy that depends on the queue length. When the number of waiting jobs in the queue is below a certain threshold, only one server should work and the other one remains idle. At or above this threshold, both servers should serve jobs. This is an extension of the known result where only the heterogeneity in speed is considered.     

有可再生能源和电力存储设施并网的智能电网优化用电策略

大量可再生能源和存储设施集中或分布接入电网,缓解了电网的供给压力,但同时也对电力系统安全造成新的威胁。合理使用新能源和可存储设施使之更好为电网服务,是现代电网亟待解决的一个问题。本文对有可存储设备和可再生能源并网的电力系统进行研究,根据可再生能源在实际生活中的情形,将其划分为两类：私人新能源发电和公共新能源发电,其中私人新能源发电可供自身直接使用,多余部分并入电网,而公共新能源发电直接并入电网,然后针对上述复杂情形,结合用户实际需求,以所有用户效用最大化、成本最小化为目标函数,建立优化模型,给出了一种既有可存储设备又有可再生能源复杂并网情况下用户优化用电策略——包括家用电器、新能源、以及存储设备充放电策略。对模型的性质进行研究,考虑到模型是凸规划,强对偶成立,用拉格朗日对偶算法给出了模型的解。求解过程中,由于目标函数是非光滑的,采用光滑化的技术将目标函数光滑化,将非光滑问题转化为光滑问题,进一步利用拟牛顿下降法求解。该策略能确保新能源得到优先、充分利用,体现用户效用最大化、成本最小化,同时可以避免由于新能源并网可能会造成电网不稳定情况的出现;光滑化的方法不但适用于本文,经过适当改进后也可适用于其他目标函数为非光滑的情况。仿真结果验证了模型的合理性和算法的可行性。     

考虑差异化服务时间的多车型电动汽车路径优化与充电策略研究

在政府政策大力支持以及社会环境意识不断增长的背景下,电动汽车在物流配送行业快速普及。电动汽车参与的物流配送服务需要物流专员、电动汽车和顾客三方协作完成。因此,在传统车辆配送路径优化的基础上,车辆的多样性、充电策略、人车的匹配以及服务时间差异化等因素都会影响物流运营成本。本文提出了考虑差异化服务成本的多车型电动汽车路径优化与充电策略问题并建立了该问题的整数规划数学模型。其次,提出了混合启发式算法MCWGATS,并通过多组算例验证了算法的有效性。最后,采用多组算例分析了多车型和差异化服务时间对运营成本的影响。实验结果表明,该模型有助于物流企业提高人员、物流车辆、服务时间等资源的利用效率,降低运营成本。