Practices for strategic capacity management in Malaysian manufacturing firms

While the notion of manufacturing capabilities is a long-standing notion in research on operations management, its actual implementation and management has been hardly researched. Five case studies in Malaysia offered the opportunity to examine the practice of manufacturing managers with regard to strategic capability management. The data collection and analysis was structured by using the notion of Strategic Capacity Management. Whereas traditionally literature has demonstrated the beneficial impact of an appropriate manufacturing strategy on the business strategy and performance, the study highlights the difficulty of managers to set the strategy, let alone implementing it. This is partly caused by the immense pressure of customers in these dominantly Make-To-Order environments for SMEs. Current concepts for manufacturing capabilities have insufficiently accounted this phenomenon and an outline of a research agenda is presented

Modelización, Simulación y Optimización del personal operativo en la administración de Call/Contact Center

El presente trabajo expone una descripción del proceso de la estimación óptima de los requerimientos de agentes, y se analiza a través de la simulación el problema de la programación de turnos de trabajos, desde la perspectiva de la programación matemática no lineal, para la administración efectiva y eficiente del recurso humano en los Centros de Llamadas o Contactos Telefónicos (Telephone Call/Contact Centers). La simulación que se implementa lleva a cabo dos procesos de optimización: 1) La determinación óptima de los recursos humanos necesarios para la atención de los clientes, que se materializa con la resolución de un modelo de programación lineal. 2) La determinación de la política más adecuada para la asignación de turnos, bajo la restricción de mantener un cierto nivel de servicio. Para éste último, se utiliza el método de las Combinaciones Lineales basadas en función objetivo no lineal y restricciones lineales convexas. El software de simulación que se implementó, está basado en la técnica de simulación de eventos discretos permitiendo un diseño visual de los modelos de análisis. El aporte significativo y novedoso del trabajo, se orienta hacia la utilización de técnicas sencillas de la Programación Matemática No Lineal en la programación de turnos, y el uso de la herramienta de simulación para hacer una predicción precisa de los requerimientos de personal y la asignación de turnos.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Reescalonamento de equipas de atendimento permanente : caso prático em telecomunicações

Mestrado em Decisão Económica e EmpresarialNuma equipa de atendimento permanente com um escalonamento pré-definido, qualquer motivo de ausência de um colaborador (baixa, formação, férias, etc.) provoca uma cadeia de alterações nos horários já atribuídos. Atualmente, a forma de ultrapassar o problema consiste em afetar um elemento da equipa à árdua tarefa de realocar os colaboradores aos horários ainda não atribuídos, de forma manual. Este projeto pretende ultrapassar o problema através do desenvolvimento de uma heurística de reescalonamento que produza uma nova programação de horários. Inicialmente recorre-se ao VBA para reproduzir o escalonamento pré-definido pela empresa. Após o escalonamento, é programada uma heurística com o objetivo de minimizar o impacto no escalonamento inicial face a imprevistos. O resultado consiste num novo escalonamento tendo em conta restrições associadas a horários imprescindíveis e às limitações inerentes aos contratos laborais de cada colaborador.In a permanent attendance team with a predefined schedule, any reason of absence given by an employee (illness, professional qualification, vacation, etc.) causes a chain of changes in the schedules already assigned. Now, the way to overcome the problem is to entrust a team member the arduous task of relocating employees to schedules not assigned yet, has to be done manually. This project aims to overcome the problem by developing a rescheduling heuristic that produces a new shifting plan. Initially, resorts to VBA which reproduce the default timetable of the company. After, is defined a heuristic in order to minimize the impact, in case of unexpected problems, in the initial stagger which will result in a new calendar, following all the restrictions associated with crucial schedules and inherent limitations in each employee's contract

A Simple Staffing Method for Multiskill Call Centers

We study a simple method for staffing in multiskill call centers. The method has short computation times and determines nearly optimal staffing levels. It is in both views competitive to other methods from the literature. Because of the fast and accurate performance of the method, many different scenarios can be analyzed, and our method can be used for both tactical and strategic capacity management decisions.contact centers, multiskill call centers, skill-based routing, staffing, work force management