Abstract
We consider a service system where agents (or, servers) are invited on-demand. Customers arrive as a Poisson process and join a customer queue. Customer service times are i.i.d. exponential. Agents' behavior is random in two respects. First, they can be invited into the system exogenously, and join the agent queue after a random time. Second, with some probability they rejoin the agent queue after a service completion, and otherwise leave the system. The objective is to design a real-time adaptive agent invitation scheme that keeps both customer and agent queues/waiting-times small. We study an adaptive scheme, which controls the number of pending agent invitations, based on queue-state feedback.
We study the system process fluid limits, in the asymptotic regime where the customer arrival rate goes to infinity. We use the machinery of switched linear systems and common quadratic Lyapunov functions to derive sufficient conditions for the local stability of fluid limits at the desired equilibrium point (with zero queues). We conjecture that, for our model, local stability is in fact sufficient for global stability of fluid limits; the validity of this conjecture is supported by numerical and simulation experiments. When the local stability conditions do hold, simulations show good overall performance of the scheme.
- Z. Aksin, M. Armony, and V. Mehrotra. The modern call center: a multi-disciplinary perspective on operations management research. Production and Operations Management, 16(6):665--688, 2007.Google ScholarCross Ref
- American Telemedicine Association. Core Operational Guidelines for Telehealth Services Involving Provider-Patient Interactions, 2014.Google Scholar
- P. Formisano. Flexibility for changing business needs: Improve customer service and drive more revenue with a virtual crowdsourcing solution. White paper, 2014.Google Scholar
- I. Gurvich and A. Ward. On the dynamic control of matching queues. Stochastic Systems, 4(2):479--523, 2014.Google ScholarCross Ref
- B. R. K. Kashyap. The double-ended queue with bulk service and limited waiting space. Operations Research, 14(5):822--834, 1966. Google ScholarDigital Library
- L. Nguyen and A. Stolyar. A service system with randomly behaving on-demand agents, 2016. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.03413v1.pdf.Google Scholar
- G. Pang and A. Stolyar. A service system with on-demand agent invitations. Queueing Systems, 2015. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.7380v2.pdf. Google ScholarDigital Library
- R. Shorten, F. Wirth, O. Mason, K. Wulff, and C. King. Stability criteria for switched and hybrid systems. SIAM Review, 49(4):545--592, 2007. Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Stolyar, M. Reiman, N. Korolev, V. Mezhibovsky, and H. Ristock. Pacing in knowledge worker engagement, 2010. United States Patent Application 20100266116-A1.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- A Service System with Randomly Behaving On-demand Agents
Recommendations
A Service System with Randomly Behaving On-demand Agents
SIGMETRICS '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGMETRICS International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer ScienceWe consider a service system where agents (or, servers) are invited on-demand. Customers arrive as a Poisson process and join a customer queue. Customer service times are i.i.d. exponential. Agents' behavior is random in two respects. First, they can be ...
A service system with on-demand agent invitations
We consider a service system where agents are invited on-demand. Customers arrive exogenously as a Poisson process and join a customer queue upon arrival if no agent is available. Agents decide to accept or decline invitations after some exponentially ...
A queueing system with on-demand servers: local stability of fluid limits
We study a system where a random flow of customers is served by servers (called agents) invited on-demand. Each invited agent arrives into the system after a random time; after each service completion, an agent returns to the system or leaves it with ...
Comments