Feedback control ideas for call center staffing

European Control Conference 2009 • Budapest, Hungary, August 23–26, 2009Call centers are nowadays a widespread solution to deal with customer support and as platform for different kind of business. Call center staffing is crucial to provide adequate service levels at acceptable costs. The task is usually accomplished using heuristics with the help of a human experts or with some static offline optimization based on operations research. Simulators based on queue theory are in some cases also used. The aim of the paper is to show that call center staffing can be posed as a feedback control problem with the advantage of getting a higher level of automation, and a wealth of results from control theory that can help to obtain the best possible staffing. In the paper the authors briefly describe the working procedures of call centers and how the staffing is usually made. They propose a feedback controller that it is used with a call center simulator. The results show that good call center staffing can be obtained even with a not very sophisticated controller

How Labor-Management Partnerships Improve Patient Care, Cost Control, and Labor Relations: Case Studies of Fletcher Allen Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, and Montefiore Medical Center’s Care Management Corporation

[Excerpt] This paper explores the ways in which healthcare unions and their members are strategically engaging with management through partnership to control costs and improve the patient experience, clinical outcomes, workplace environment, and labor relations. These initiatives depend on making use of the knowledge of front-line healthcare workers, improving communication between all staff members, and increasing transparency. In turn, these initiatives can also lead to more robust and dynamic local unions. Through participating in joint work activities, many union members note feeling more respected in their workplace and more connected to their union. Unions can benefit from these activities by offering their members the ability to inform decisions about how work gets done

Managing at the Speed of Light: Improving Mission-Support Performance

The House and Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittees requested this study to help DOE's three major mission-support organizations improve their operations to better meet the current and future needs of the department. The passage of the Recovery Act only increased the importance of having DOE's mission-support offices working in the most effective, efficient, and timely manner as possible. While following rules and regulations is essential, the foremost task of the mission-support offices is to support the department's mission, i.e., the programs that DOE is implementing, whether in Washington D.C. or in the field. As a result, the Panel offered specific recommendations to strengthen the mission-focus and improve the management of each of the following support functions based on five "management mandates":- Strategic Vision- Leadership- Mission and Customer Service Orientation- Tactical Implementation- Agility/AdaptabilityKey FindingsThe Panel made several recommendations in each of the functional areas examined and some overarching recommendations for the corporate management of the mission-support offices that they believed would result in significant improvements to DOE's mission-support operations. The Panel believed that adopting these recommendations will not only make DOE a better functioning organization, but that most of them are essential if DOE is to put its very large allocation of Recovery Act funding to its intended uses as quickly as possible

How Leaders Invest Staffing Resources for Learning Improvement

Analyzes staffing challenges that guide school leaders' resource decisions in the context of a learning improvement agenda, staff resource investment strategies that improve learning outcomes equitably, and ways to win support for differential investment

Bristol Maritime Center Operations Manual

Economic studies have indicated that visiting boaters spend between $25‐$300 per day per person ashore. The upper end of this average were visitors associated with regattas or events. $70 was the average expenditure used in the Bristol projections. It is important to note that Bristol’s marketing initiative can have a major influence on the level of visitor spending. For instance, coupons and information about local stores and restaurants do have a positive effect. Promoting the harbor for yacht club cruise events is not only appreciated by the event organizers, but is financially advantageous to Bristol

Assessing to Achieve High Performance: What Nonprofits are Doing and How Foundations Can Help

For foundation leaders to most effectively support grantees, more needs to be understood about the extent to which nonprofits are assessing performance, how they are approaching this work, and what they are looking for from their funders to support it.To better understand the state of practice of performance assessment at nonprofits, The Center For Effective Philanthropy (CEP) turned to its national panel of nonprofit leaders with questions about their assessment strategies and how they are supported. For nonprofits, measuring and improving performance is a challenging endeavor. Yet, the data from these surveys reveal that nonprofits are assessing performance -- but lack the resources they need to do all they seek to do.The report shows that most nonprofits receiving funding from large foundations collect and use information about their performance, yet many want to gather additional -- or better -- data. The typical nonprofit in the study allocates just two percent or less of its budget to assessing its performance, and few employ staff who are dedicated to this work full time. In approaching this work, only a minority of nonprofits in the study report receiving support from foundations for their performance assessment efforts

Wisdom at Work: The Importance of the Older and Experienced Nurse in the Workplace

Focuses on promising strategies and opportunities for retaining experienced nurses, one of many approaches the authors recommend to alleviate the current nurse shortage crisis

Downsizing a Great Observatory: Reinventing Spitzer in the Warm Mission

The Spitzer Space Telescope transitioned from the cryogen mission to the IRAC warm mission during 2009. This transition involved changing several areas of operations in order to cut the mission annual operating costs to 1/3 of the cryogen mission amount. In spite of this substantial cut back, Spitzer continues to have one of the highest science return per dollar ratio of any of NASA's extended missions. This paper will describe the major operational changes made for the warm mission and how they affect the science return. The paper will give several measures showing that warm Spitzer continues as one of the most scientifically productive mission in NASA's portfolio. This work was performed at the California Institute of Technology under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Firelight Foundation: An interim evaluation report of the Early Learning Innovation Fund

The Hewlett Foundation in 2014 selected Management Systems International (MSI) to implement a midterm evaluation of the Early Learning Innovation Fund. This evaluation explores the concept and design of the Fund; progress in achieving the Hewlett Foundation's four intermediary outcomes; and Firelight's implementation of the innovation fund with a focus on its approach to capacity building and expanding innovative programs. This evaluation also reviews the quality of the sub-grantees' monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems and explores the potential of conducting an impact evaluation of sub-grantee activities

In-Depth Portfolio Assessment: Shelby County Schools, Memphis, TN

The 2013 merger of Memphis City Schools (with 103,000 students) and Shelby County Schools (with 47,000 students) was the largest school district consolidation in American history. In its first year of operation, the new Shelby County Schools (SCS) commissioned CRPE researchers to perform a critical review of the district's readiness to implement a portfolio strategy for managing its schools. Based on interviews with internal and external stakeholders and analysis against model system progress, this report outlines CRPE's baseline measurement of where SCS stands in relation to the seven main components of the portfolio strategy. The report also provides suggestions for how SCS can seek progress over the next year, and track progress or decline at future intervals