Download or read book Performance Analysis and Optimization of Inbound Call Centers written by Raik Stolletz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The material presented in this book is a result of my work in the field of call center management during the period 1999-2002. The focus is on the perfor mance analysis and optimization of inbound call centers. Since call arrivals and call-handling times are often random in inbound call centers, this thesis concentrates on the performance analysis and optimization using queueing models. This book describes mathematical methods and algorithms to relate the number of agents and telephone trunks of a given call center configuration to technical as well as economic performance measures. This book has been accepted as a PhD thesis in Business Administration at the Technical University of Clausthal, Germany. I am indebted to many people for their support during the process of writing this thesis. First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. Dr. Stefan Helber, for motivating my research to call center related problems. He gently pushed me in fruitful directions and encouraged me to strike a balance between mathematical results and economic implications. Many other helpful suggestions came from him, and his constructive comments on draft versions of this book are invaluable. I am thankful to him and to Prof. Dr. Rolf Schwinn for refereeing this thesis.

Download or read book Call Center Optimization written by Ger Koole and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2013 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives an accessible overview of the role and potential of mathematical optimization in call centers. It deals extensively with all aspects of workforce management, but also with topics such as call routing and the scheduling of multiple channels. It does so without going into the mathematics, but by focusing on understanding its consequences. This way the reader will get familiar with workload forecasting, the Erlang formulas, simulation, and so forth, and learn how to improve call center performance using it. The book is primarily meant for call center professionals involved in planning and business analytics, but also call center managers and researchers will find it useful. There is an accompanying website which contains several online calculators.

Download or read book Operations Research Proceedings 2003 written by Dino Ahr and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a selection of papers referring to lectures presented at the symposium "Operations Research 2003" (OR03) held at the Ruprecht Karls-Universitiit Heidelberg, September 3 - 5, 2003. This international con ference took place under the auspices of the German Operations Research So ciety (GOR) and of Dr. Erwin Teufel, prime minister of Baden-Wurttemberg. The symposium had about 500 participants from countries all over the world. It attracted academians and practitioners working in various field of Opera tions Research and provided them with the most recent advances in Opera tions Research and related areas in Economics, Mathematics, and Computer Science. The program consisted of 4 plenary and 13 semi-plenary talks and more than 300 contributed papers selected by the program committee to be presented in 17 sections. Due to a limited number of pages available for the proceedings volume, the length of each article as well as the total number of accepted contributions had to be restricted. Submitted manuscripts have therefore been reviewed and 62 of them have been selected for publication. This refereeing procedure has been strongly supported by the section chairmen and we would like to express our gratitude to them. Finally, we also would like to thank Dr. Werner Muller from Springer-Verlag for his support in publishing this proceedings volume.

Download or read book Evolution of Non Expected Utility Preferences written by Sven von Widekind and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory on the evolution of preferences deals with the endogenous formation of preference relations in strategic situations. It is related to the field of evolutionary game theory. In this book we analyze the role and the influence of general, possibly non-expected utility preferences in such an evolutionary setup. In particular, we demonstrate that preferences which diverge from von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility may potentially prove to be successful under evolutionary pressures.

Download or read book Partner Choice and Cooperation in Networks written by Aljaž Ule and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-01-10 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, a social dilemma with partner selection is introduced and studied with the methods of formal game theory, experimental economics and computer simulations. It allows exploration of simultaneous dynamics of the network structure and cooperative behavior on this structure. The results of this study show that partner choice strongly facilitates cooperation and leads to networks where free-riders are likely to be excluded.

Download or read book Computer aided Systems in Public Transport written by Mark Hickman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-01-23 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume consists of selected papers presented at the Ninth International Conference on Computer-Aided Scheduling of Public Transport. Coverage includes the use of computer-aided methods and operations research techniques to improve: information management; network and route planning; vehicle and crew scheduling and rostering; vehicle monitoring and management; and practical experience with scheduling and public transport planning methods.

Download or read book Strategic Trading in Illiquid Markets written by Burkart Mönch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-01-13 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Area of Research and the Object of Investigation In this thesis we will investigate trading strategies in illiquid markets from a market microstructure perspective. Market microstructure is the academic term for the branch of financial economics that investigates trading and the organization of security markets, see, e. g. , Harris (2002). Historically, exchanges evolved as a location, where those interested in buy ing or selling securities could meet physically to transact. Thus, traditionally security trading was organized on exchange floors, where so-called dealers arranged all trades and provided liquidity by quoting prices at which they were willing buy or sell. Consequently, the initial surge of the market mi crostructure literature focused predominantly on this type of market design, which is often referred to as quote-driven. Nowadays, the interest is shifting towards order-driven markets. Beginning with the Toronto Stock Exchange in the mid 1970s and increasing in fre quency and scope, this market structure has emerged as the preeminent form of security trading worldwide. In order-driven markets, exchanges arrange trades by matching public orders, often by employing automatic execution systems. Introduction A major difference between a quote-driven and an order-driven market arises from the transparency pre- and post-trade. The pre-trade transparency con cerns the question whether the order book is visible to the keeper only, or whether it is open to the public.

Download or read book Consumption Structure and Macroeconomics written by Reto Foellmi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-03-30 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a novel perspective that allows to incorporate changing consumption and production structure into models of economic growth. Starting from the empirical observation that income and consumption structure are closely related, it develops a tractable theoretical framework which enables to analyze macroeconomic models consistent with these empirical facts. As a result, central macroeconomic phenomena are better understood: the reasons behind long-run growth, structural change, and the influence of inequality on innovations and growth.

Download or read book Time Continuity in Discrete Time Models written by Christopher Suerie and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-01-17 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Production planning problems containing special characteristics from process industries are addressed in this book. The main subject is the development of mathematical programming models that allow to model production plans which are not disrupted by discretization of time. However, discrete time models are used as a basis and are subsequently enhanced to include aspects of time continuity. Their integration is achieved by different building blocks which may be combined freely according to the specific planning situation at hand. The primary area of application of these kinds of models are process industries.

Download or read book Economic Evolution and Equilibrium written by Marco Lehmann-Waffenschmidt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-06-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work uses various model frameworks to study the evolution of equilibria in an open loop evolving economy in which the model characteristics evolve without any directional restrictions except for continuity. Applying mathematical methods, it is shown that equilibria can always be adapted in a piecewise gradual, non bang-bang way.

Download or read book Complex Systems Approach to Economic Dynamics written by Abraham C.-L. Chian and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-08-17 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Statistical analysis of stock markets and foreign exchange markets has demonstrated the intermittent nature of economic time series. A nonlinear model of business cycles is able to simulate intermittency arising from order-chaos and chaos-chaos transitions. This monograph introduces new concepts of unstable periodic orbits and chaotic saddles, which are unstable structures embedded in a chaotic attractor and responsible for economic intermittency.

Download or read book Kanban Controlled Manufacturing Systems written by Georg Krieg and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-03-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 5th Werner Kern Award for Productivity Research 2005 Kanban control systems bear a great potential to significantly improve operations. A company may reap the full benefits of kanban control only after determining an optimal or near-optimal system configuration. To do that, methods are needed to evaluate the performance and operating costs of individual system configurations. We propose an innovative construction-kit approach that enables us to build stochastic analytical models of a large class of single- and multi-product kanban systems. The presented construction-kit approach may be extended and augmented in various directions.

Download or read book Lot Sizing and Scheduling for Flexible Flow Lines written by Daniel Quadt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-09-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book considers the lot-sizing and scheduling problem for flexible flow line production facilities. Flexible flow lines are flow lines with parallel machines on some or all production stages. They can be found in a vast number of industries. A three-phased solution approach is presented that solves the integrated lot-sizing and scheduling problem in a hierarchical manner. The approach is able to handle several important features relevant in industrial practice, such as back-orders and setup carry-over. The developed solution procedures solve practically sized problems in a relatively short amount of time. One of the procedures is based on a novel mixed integer programming (MIP) model, which employs integer variables instead of binary variables. This makes it possible to find (near-)optimal solutions using standard algorithms such as CPLEX. Another procedure uses two nested Genetic Algorithms. An application of the framework in the semiconductor industry is given.

Download or read book Nonlinear Dynamics and Heterogeneous Interacting Agents written by Thomas Lux and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-06-06 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic application of nonlinear dynamics, microscopic agent-based modelling, and the use of artificial intelligence techniques as learning devices of boundedly rational actors are among the most exciting interdisciplinary ventures of economic theory over the past decade. This volume provides us with a most fascinating series of examples on "complexity in action" exemplifying the scope and explanatory power of these innovative approaches.

Download or read book Distribution Logistics written by Bernhard Fleischmann and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-08-29 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complexity of distribution systems is augmented by various trends: globalization of the manufacturing industry, rising customer demands, and the reverse flows within closed-loop systems. In this light, the need for ‘advanced’ planning methods that are based on quantitative optimization is constantly increasing. This book takes up the challenges posed by these developments. In doing so, it presents recent results and case studies from a group of researchers that regularly meet at the IWDL (International Workshop on Distribution Logistics). The text covers the design of distribution networks, vehicle routing, warehousing and reverse logistics. It also contains a comprehensive review of more than 60 case studies in reverse logistics.

Download or read book Default Risk in Bond and Credit Derivatives Markets written by Christoph Benkert and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-08-27 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Due to the scarcity of reliable data, the existing literature on default risk still displays an imbalance between theoretical and empirical contributions. Consequently, the focus of this book is on empirical work. Within an intensity based modelling framework a broad range of promising specifications is tested using corporate bond data. The book provides one of the most comprehensive empirical studies in the field, from Kalman filtration of affine term structure models to the use of Efficient Method of Moments estimation of dynamic term structure models in a default risky context. Filling another gap in empirical research, the book devotes special attention to the identification factors that can explain credit default swap premia.

Download or read book Generalized Bounds for Convex Multistage Stochastic Programs written by Daniel Kuhn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2005 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates convex multistage stochastic programs whose objective and constraint functions exhibit a generalized nonconvex dependence on the random parameters. Although the classical Jensen and Edmundson-Madansky type bounds or their extensions are generally not available for such problems, tight bounds can systematically be constructed under mild regularity conditions. A distinct primal-dual symmetry property is revealed when the proposed bounding method is applied to linear stochastic programs. Exemplary applications are studied to assess the performance of the theoretical concepts in situations of practical relevance. It is shown how market power, lognormal stochastic processes, and risk-aversion can be properly handled in a stochastic programming framework. Numerical experiments show that the relative gap between the bounds can typically be reduced to a few percent at reasonable problem dimensions.