Coordination of staffing and pricing decisions in a service firm

Customer demand is sensitive to the price paid for the service in many service environments. Using queueing theory framework, we develop profit maximization models for jointly determining the price and the staffing level in a service company. The models include constraints on the average waiting time and the blocking probability. We show convexity of the single-variable subproblem under certain plausible assumptions on the demand and staffing cost functions. Using numerical examples, we investigate the sensitivity of the price and the staffing level to changes in the marginal service cost and the user-specified constraint on the congestion measure. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Open queueing networks : optimization and performance evaluation models for discrete manufacturing systems

Includes bibliographical references (p. 41-45).Research supported by Fundac̦ão de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil.by Gabriel R. Bitran, Reinaldo Morabito

A review of the open queueing network models of manufacturing systems

"December 1990."Includes bibliographical references (p. 52-58).Research partially supported by the "Leaders for Manufacturing Program". Research partially supported by the UCLA Senate Committee on Grants. 99by Gabriel R. Bitran, Sriram Dasu