A Stochastic Programming Approach for Staffing and Scheduling Call Centers with Uncertain Demand Forecasts

Mathilde Excoffier, Céline Gicquel, Oualid Jouini, Abdel Lisser

2014

Abstract

We consider a workforce management problem arising in call centers, namely a staffing and shift-scheduling problem. It consists in determining the minimum-cost number of agents to be assigned to each shift of the scheduling horizon so as to reach the required customer quality of service. We assume that the mean call arrival rate in each period of the horizon is a random variable following a continuous distribution. We model the resulting optimization problem as a stochastic program involving joint probabilistic constraints. This allows to manage the risk of not reaching the required quality of service at the horizon level rather than on a period by period basis. We propose a solution approach based on linear approximations to provide approximate solutions of the problem. We finally give numerical results carried out on a real-life instance. These results show that the proposed approach compares well with previously published approaches both in terms of risk management and cost minimization.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Excoffier M., Gicquel C., Jouini O. and Lisser A. (2014). A Stochastic Programming Approach for Staffing and Scheduling Call Centers with Uncertain Demand Forecasts . In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES, ISBN 978-989-758-017-8, pages 80-88. DOI: 10.5220/0004832100800088

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icores14,
author={Mathilde Excoffier and Céline Gicquel and Oualid Jouini and Abdel Lisser},
title={A Stochastic Programming Approach for Staffing and Scheduling Call Centers with Uncertain Demand Forecasts},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES,},
year={2014},
pages={80-88},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004832100800088},
isbn={978-989-758-017-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES,
TI - A Stochastic Programming Approach for Staffing and Scheduling Call Centers with Uncertain Demand Forecasts
SN - 978-989-758-017-8
AU - Excoffier M.
AU - Gicquel C.
AU - Jouini O.
AU - Lisser A.
PY - 2014
SP - 80
EP - 88
DO - 10.5220/0004832100800088