ASAP: The After Salesman Problem

The customer contacts taking place after a sales transaction and the services involved are of increasing importance in contemporary business models. The responsiveness to service requests is a key dimension in service quality and therefore an important succes factor in this business domain. This responsiveness is of course highly dependent on the operational scheduling or dispatching decisions made in the often dynamic service settings. We consider the problem of optimizing responsiveness to service requests arriving in real time. We consider three models and formulations and present computational results on exact solution methods. The research is based on practical practical work done with the largest service organization in The Netherlands.operations research and management science;

Throughput Rate Optimization in High Multiplicity Sequencing Problems

Mixed model assembly systems assemble products (parts) of differenttypes in certain prespecified quantities. A minimal part set is a smallestpossible set of product type quantities, to be called the multiplicities,in which the numbers of assembled products of the various types are inthe desired ratios. It is common practice to repeatedly assemble minimalpart sets, and in such a way that the products of each of the minimalpart sets are assembled in the same sequence. Little is known howeverregarding the resulting throughput rate, in particular in comparison to thethroughput rates attainable by other input strategies. This paper investigatesthroughput and balancing issues in repetitive manufacturing environments.It considers sequencing problems that occur in this setting andhow the repetition strategy influences throughput. We model the problemsas a generalization of the traveling salesman problem and derive ourresults in this general setting. Our analysis uses well known concepts fromscheduling theory and combinatorial optimization.Economics ;

Minder dan excellent is niet gepast

__Abstract__ De prestaties van ziekenhuizen, verpleeghuizen en zelfstandige behandelcentra zijn tegenwoordig vaak onderwerp van gesprek. Doorgaans is dat omdat de zorg die ze leveren als ongepast wordt beschouwd, bijvoorbeeld omdat deze onveilig is. Natuurlijk kan worden getracht met beleidsmaatregelen, oftewel op macroniveau, de organisaties, het mesoniveau, gepast te laten presteren. De factoren die van belang zijn voor de prestaties van organisaties zitten echter voor een belangrijk deel op het mesoniveau zelf. Organisaties kunnen zelf iedere dag beter worden in het leveren van zorg, en minder is niet gepast