Consider the following due-date scheduling problem in a multiclass, acyclic, single-station service system: any class k job arriving at time t must be served by its due date t D_{k}. Equivalently, its delay ¦Ó_{k} must not exceed a given delay or lead-time D_{k}. In a stochastic system the...

We study how multi-product queueing systems should be controlled so that sojourn times (or end-to-end delays) do not exceed specified leadtimes. The network dynamically decides when to admit new arrivals and how to sequence the jobs in the system. To analyze this difficult problem, we propose an...

We developed a method for workforce scheduling that models both the structure of the set of permissible shifts, and the stochastic and time-varying demand process. A prototype implementation uses a genetic algorithm to search for good schedules, and evaluates the service level resulting from a...

This article studies the optimal prices and service quality grades that a queuing system --- the "firm” --- provides to heterogeneous, utility-maximizing customers who measure quality by their experienced delay distributions. Results are threefold: First, delay cost curves are introduced that...