Management Policies to Improve the Effectiveness of Multi-Station Service Organizations*

A SLAM based simulation model of a multi-station, tandem queuing structure characteristic of a variety of service systems is employed to test various design options for the system. The model is based on an extensive study of the State of Florida driver licensing offices. The multiple objectives of low time in the system for customers and the efficient use of personnel resources are employed to measure the benefits of policy options. The use of simulation analysis permits the incorporation of complex system characteristics, therefore providing a realistic representation of the effects of possible management actions. Effective methods to control labor in such systems are suggested.     

Plots of Conditional Wait-Time Intervals Provide Better Information to Queueing System Arrivals

The management of queues is a very important aspect of service operations management. One way to enhance the queueing experience is to provide customers with the most informative and certain estimate of anticipated wait time. This paper develops such a measure—referred to as the conditional wait-time interval (CWTI)—for queueing systems with exponentially distributed service times. It is especially applicable at the operational level of an organization since it utilizes the most current information on the status of the system (number of customers in the queue at arrival). CWTI is also based on two risk factors that consider the chance a customer's actual wait time is outside of the estimated range. This paper also provides a graphical means to display multiple CWTIs.     

Optimizing Service Attributes: The Seller's Utility Problem*

Service designers predict market share and sales for their new designs by estimating consumer utilities. The service's technical features (for example, overnight parcel delivery), its price, and the nature of consumer interactions with the service delivery system influence those utilities. Price and the service's technical features are usually quite objective and readily ascertained by the consumer. However, consumer perceptions about their interactions with the service delivery system are usually far more subjective. Furthermore, service designers can only hope to influence those perceptions indirectly through their decisions about nonlinear processes such as employee recruiting, training, and scheduling policies. Like the service's technical features, these process choices affect quality perceptions, market share, revenues, costs, and profits. We propose a heuristic for the NP‐hard service design problem that integrates realistic service delivery cost models with conjoint analysis. The resulting seller's utility function links expected profits to the intensity of a service's influential attributes and also reveals an ideal setting or level for each service attribute. In tests with simulated service design problems, our proposed configurations compare quite favorably with the designs suggested by other normative service design heuristics.     

A Comparative Revenue Analysis of Hotel Yield Management Heuristics

Yield management is the dynamic pricing, overbooking, and allocation of perishable assets across market segments in an effort to maximize short-term revenues for the firm. Numerous optimization heuristics for allocation and overbooking exist for the airline industry, whose perishable asset is the airplane seat. When an airplane departs, no revenue is gained from the empty seat(s). In the hotel industry, the perishable asset is the hotel room-once a room is left empty for a night, that night's revenue cannot be recaptured. The literature on yield management heuristics for the hotel industry is sparse. For the hotel operating environment, no research has adequately (1) integrated overbooking with allocation, (2) modeled the phenomenon of hotel patrons extending or contracting their stay at a moment's notice, or (3) performed a realistic performance comparison of alternative heuristics. This research develops (1) two hotel-specific algorithms that both integrate overbooking with the allocation decisions, (2) a simulation model to reproduce realistic hotel operating environments, and (3) compares the performance of five heuristics under 36 realistic hotel operating environments. Seven conclusions are reached with regard to which heuristic(s) perform best in specific operating environments. Generally, heuristic selection is very much dependent on the hotel operating environment. A counterintuitive result is that in many operating environments, the simpler heuristics work as well as the more complex ones.     

Toward an Understanding of the Factors Affecting the Quality of the Audit Process*

The accounting profession has faced increasing pressure from external parties to monitor and improve the quality of the audit process. Similar to other service oriented industries, the accounting profession's ability to meet these pressures has been hampered by the lack of an objective means by which to evaluate process quality. In this research, groups of experienced auditors from two international accounting firms were used to develop and validate a set of key factors influencing the quality of the audit process and a corresponding set of measures for evaluating audit quality. The results support the belief that there exists a consensus among experienced auditors on a set of key audit quality factors which have a significant impact on overall audit quality. The results obtained go beyond those in prior audit quality research, in that the factors identified cover a broader scope and recognize the significant effect of the audit environment on process quality. The consistency between groups in the profession provides support for further use of the nominal group techniques in developing quality measures for processes in other service sector areas.     

社区公共服务对老年人幸福感的影响

本文基于中国老年健康影响因素跟踪调查(CLHLS)2018年数据,运用Ordered probit模型和工具变量条件混合过程估计法(CMP方法)考察社区公共服务对老年人幸福感的影响。研究表明,社区公共服务完善程度对老年人幸福感具有显著的促进作用,且这一影响具有明显的城乡、独居养老成因和年龄异质性。社区公共服务匹配度对社区公共服务的老年幸福感效应具有明显调节作用:社区公共服务匹配度越高,社区公共服务对老年人幸福感的促进作用越强。因此,构建以社区为依托的多层次养老体系不仅要着力完善社区公共服务,更要重视社区公共服务供给与老年居民真实需求间的精准匹配,以在提升资源利用效率的同时更好地发挥社区公共服务对老年居民福祉的促进作用。     

Tour Scheduling and Task Assignment of a Heterogeneous Work Force: A Heuristic Approach

The dual problem of work tour scheduling and task assignment involving workers who differ in their times of availability and task qualifications is examined in this paper. The problem is presented in the context of a fast food restaurant, but applies equally well to a diverse set of service operations. Developing a week-long labor schedule is a nontrivial problem, in terms of complexity and importance, which a manager spends as much as a full workday solving. The primary scheduling objective (the manager's concern) is the minimization of overstaffing in the face of significant hourly and daily fluctuations in minimum staffing requirements. The secondary objective (the workers’ concern) is the minimization of the sum of the squared differences between the number of work hours scheduled and the number targeted for each employee. Contributing to scheduling complexity are constraints on the structure of work tours, including minimum and maximum shift lengths and a maximum number of workdays. A goal programming formulation of a representative problem is shown to be too large, for all practical purposes, to be solved optimally. Existing heuristic procedures related to this research possess inherent limitations which render them inadequate for our purposes. Subsequently, we propose and demonstrate a computerized heuristic procedure capable of producing a labor schedule requiring at most minor refinement by a manager.     

Replication of Measures in Information Systems Research: The Case of IS SERVQUAL*

The Information Systems (IS) discipline should recognize potential pitfalls in replication of research studies. This response to a note appearing in this issue by Van Dyke, Prybutok, and Kappelman (1999) aims to serve two purposes. First, this note will address the problems we have with the Van Dyke et al. (1999) attempted replication of our own previous work. Second, we hope it serves to establish more generally an awareness in the IS field for the potential to create and accept the “illusion of replicability” when this has not really been established.     

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.     

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.