Networks

YEQT VIII "Stochastic Service Systems", 3-5 November 2014

Location: EURANDOM, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Date: 3-5 November 2014
Organizers: Ahmad Al Hanbali (UT), Joachim Arts (TU/e), Onno Boxma (TU/e), Peter van de Ven (CWI)

Number of participants: 14

 

The theme of the 8th Young European Queueing Theorists workshop (YEQT) workshop was "Service Operations"

 

The Young European Queueing Theorists workshop (YEQT) workshops are organized annually by the Eurandom research institute for stochastics located at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. The aim of these workshops is to bring together young researchers and renowned scientists, to share and discuss research related to operations research, applied probability and related areas. 

 

The theme of  YEQT 2014 was "Service operations", which encompasses operations of companies other than manufacturing and distribution. For the most part, service operations include the following three broad fields:

  • maintenance and service logistics

  • call center operations

  • healthcare operations

As examples, one may think of:

  • the maintenance of aircraft by airlines and logistics for related resources such as service engineers and spare part
  • the operation of large call centers for various companie
  • the logistics involved with the care of patients in hospitals across different department

In all these cases, there is considerable uncertainty that needs to be addressed in optimizing these operations. Applied probability is therefore a crucial component in modeling and optimizing the performance of service operations in these contexts. While the field of service operations is defined based on its applications, it also motivates several more fundamental studies in (applied) probability. For example, renewal theory was initially conceived to study the decision of when to perform maintenance on assets. Renewal theory remains a primary tool in the study of many maintenance decisions. Furthermore, many service operations can be modeled as queueing systems (e.g., call centers).

 

More information

The programme and abstracts can be found on the webpage of Eurandom.