A queueing model for customer rescheduling and no-shows in service systems

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

11-2021

Abstract

We study an M/M/1/K queue where customers can reschedule their appointments. Rescheduled customers show up with higher probabilities, incurring lower no-show costs, but rescheduling also frees up slots that may not be filled later, leading to wasted service capacity and lower throughput. The system manager aims to minimize the long-run average cost by controlling rescheduling policies. We derive conditions under which rescheduling should be allowed for different scenarios depending on whether customers can reschedule only once or multiple times.

Keywords

Rescheduling, No-show, Appointment, Queue, Markov decision process

Discipline

Business Administration, Management, and Operations | Management Information Systems | Operations and Supply Chain Management

Research Areas

Operations Management

Publication

Operations Research Letters

Volume

49

Issue

6

First Page

821

Last Page

828

ISSN

0167-6377

Identifier

10.1016/j.orl.2021.09.002

Publisher

Elsevier

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