Capacity Allocation in Queuing Systems with Preferred Service Start Times
Bahar Çavdar
Industrial Engineering, METU

Abstract
We consider a queuing system where each arriving job has a preferred time period to be served. We assume that all jobs must be served before or on their requested time period, and the jobs are outsourced when the capacity is insufficient. Costs are incurred for both outsourced jobs and the jobs that are served early. Unlike most queuing systems where each job is served as soon as possible, we make a strategic decision for when to serve each job based on their requested times and the associated costs. For systems with short planning horizons and a single class of jobs, we show that a class of threshold policies are optimal for the capacity allocation. For general systems, we devise heuristic policies based on similar threshold structures. Our numerical study investigates the behavior of the optimal policy and shows the robustness of the proposed heuristics with respect to several service parameters. Our results also provide insights on how the optimal solution changes based on the capacity of the system, length of the planning horizon, cost parameters and the order pattern of the customers.

This is joint work with Dr. Tugce Isik.

Short Bio
Bahar Çavdar is a faculty member in the Industrial Engineering Department of Middle East Technical University. Her primary research interests are in balancing computation and implementation time when solving real-time problems in time-sensitive applications. She also works on integrating human behavior into standard models. Dr. Çavdar received her Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, and her B.S. in industrial engineering with a minor in computer engineering from Middle East Technical University.

Venue
Friday, December 8, 2017 at 4.00 pm in IE03