In this paper, we analyze a call center with impatient customers. We study how informing customers about their anticipated delays affects performance. Customers react by balking upon hearing the delay announcement and may subsequently renege, particularly if the realized waiting time exceeds the...

Call centers usually handle several types of calls, but it is usually not possible or cost effective to have every agent be able to handle every type of call. Thus, the agents tend to have different skills, in different combinations. In such an environment, it is challenging to route calls...

In a recent paper we introduced the queue-and-idleness ratio (QIR) family of routing rules for many-server service systems with multiple customer classes and server pools. A newly available server serves the customer from the head of the queue of the class (from among those the server is...

We consider a manufacturing facility that produces a single item that is demanded by several different classes of customers. The inventory-related cost performance of such a system can be improved by effective allocation of production and inventories. We obtain the optimal parameters for three...

This paper develops and analyzes a queueing model to examine the role of patient choice on the high rate of organ refusals in the kidney transplant waiting system. The model is an M/M/1 queue with homogeneous patients and exponential reneging. Patients join the waiting system and organ...