Uncertain demand driven resource platform design for a service center

Author

Smitha Hariharan

Keywords and Phrases

Service center; Service family; Demand uncertainty; Resource selection; Platform

Abstract

“Service centers are set up to cater to service requests of its customers, wherein, the requests from customers relating to various service families cascade into work packages involving a set of service tasks. A service family is defined as a set of service type variants having similar or common service tasks and hence may use a common set of resources (called the resource platform) over a given time horizon. In this paper, we present a methodology for determining cost-effective resource platform configuration(s) for a given set of service families offered by a service center. The resource platform would be able to handle demand fluctuations of various service types within reasonable limits over a given planning horizon. The draw towards forming a resource platform is to gain economies of scale cost advantage that have been achieved successfully in the product development domain. In this paper, we extend the product platform concept to the service domain. The critical parts of the proposed Service Resource Platforming System (SRPS) methodology are: (1) input pre-processing to derive relevant demand and capacity data; (2) service provider selection using a comparative attribute-utility method; (3) generation of rough cut resource selection using dynamic programming; (4) creation of a rough resource schedule using linear programming rules; (5) selection of the final resource set using uncertainty linear programming model proposed by Ben-Tal et al. (2003); (6) formation of resource platform(s) using the resource clustering concept (Huang and Irani, 1999); and (7) system performance testing using the Arena simulation models. The proposed SRPS methodology is applied to an industry motivated problem”--Abstract, page iv.

Advisor(s)

Allada, Venkat

Committee Member(s)

Myers, Donald D., 1939-2009
Stone, Robert B.

Department(s)

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering

Degree Name

M.S. in Engineering Management

Publisher

University of Missouri--Rolla

Publication Date

Fall 2005

Journal article titles appearing in thesis/dissertation

• Uncertain demand driven resource platforming for a service center

Pagination

xii, 72 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 43-46).

Rights

© 2005 Smitha Hariharan, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Subject Headings

Customer services -- Management

Thesis Number

T 8897

Print OCLC #

71054191

Link to Catalog Record

Electronic access to the full-text of this document is restricted to Missouri S&T users. Otherwise, request this publication directly from Missouri S&T Library or contact your local library.

Recommended Citation

Hariharan, Smitha, "Uncertain demand driven resource platform design for a service center" (2005). Masters Theses. 5834.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/masters_theses/5834