Chapter 3: Service Models

Phan Nguyen Ky Phuc

November 13, 2018

Contents

1 Operational Characteristics and Constraints 1

2 Performance Measures and Objectives 2

3 Assignment 2

1 Operational Characteristics and Constraints

The operational characteristics and constraints in service models are more diverse and often more difficult
to specify than those in manufacturing models.
Time Windows (Release Dates and Due Dates). Scheduling meetings, exams, or games often must
satisfy time window constraints; such time windows are equivalent to release dates and due dates in manu-
facturing.
Capacity Requirements and Constraints. Capacity requirements and constraints are important in
reservation systems, in timetabling of meetings, as well as in transportation planning and scheduling.
Preemptions. Preemptions are less prevalent in services than in manufacturing. Many types of service
activities are very difficult to preempt, e.g., an operation in a hospital, a flight leg or a game. However, some
types of service jobs can be preempted, but usually such preemptions are not allowed to occur at just any
time; preemptions in services tend to occur at specific points in time rather than at arbitrary points in time.
Setup Times and Turnaround Times. Resources may require setups between consecutive activities.
Rooms, planes, and trucks may have to be cleaned and set up for subsequent meetings or trips. This may
involve a setup time sjk that may or may not be sequence dependent.
Operator and Tooling Requirements. In an environment with parallel resources, activities may have to
be scheduled in such a way that additional requirements are met (e.g., specific operators or tools have to be
available) or, equivalently, the operators and/or tools have to be assigned in such a way that all activities
can be done according to the rules.
Workforce Scheduling Constraints. Workforce scheduling and shift assignments are usually subject to
many constraints. They are often of a form in which people work a given number of consecutive days (e.g.,
five) and then have a number of consecutive days off (e.g., two). However, there are many different types of
shifts as well as many ways of rotating them.

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Ho Chi Minh City International University Scheduling
Industrial Systems Engineering Department Lecturer: Phan Nguyen Ky Phuc

2 Performance Measures and Objectives

• Make span

• Setup cost

• Earliness and Tardiness Costs; Convenience Costs and Penalty Costs.

• Personnel Costs. A cost is associated with the assignment of a given person to a particular shift.

3 Assignment

Q1.Consider an airport terminal with a number of gates. Planes arrive and depart according to a fixed
schedule. Upon arrival a plane has to be assigned to a gate in a way that is convenient for the passengers
as well as for the airport personnel. Certain gates are only capable of handling narrowbody planes. Model
this problem as a machine scheduling problem.
(a) Specify the machines and the processing times.
(b) Describe the processing restrictions and constraints, if any.
(c) Formulate an appropriate objective function.
Q2. A consulting company has to install a brand new production planning and scheduling system for a
client. This project requires the succesful completion of a number of activities. The precedence relationships
between these activities are depicted in the table.
(a) Compute the makespan of the project.
(b) If it would be possible to shorten one of the activities by one week, which activity should be shortened?

No. Job Description of Job Duration (in week) Immediate Predecessor(s)

1 Installation of new computer equipment
2 Testing of computer equipment
3 Development of the software
4 Recruiting of additional systems people
5 Manual testing of software
6 Training of new personnel
7 Orientation of new personnel
8 System testing
9 System training
10 Final debugging
11 System changeover
8 _
5 1
6 _
3 _
2 3
5 4
2 4
4 1,5,6
7 1,5,6
4 2
9 7,8,9

Q3.Consider the reservation system in a hotel. People call in to make reservations. Model the problem as a
machine scheduling problem.
(a) What are the machines?
(b) Are all the machines identical?
(c) What are the jobs and what are their processing times?
(d) Formulate an appropriate objective for the hotel to optimize.
Q4.Consider an exam schedule at a large university. The exams have to be scheduled in such a way that
potential conflicts for the students are minimized. There are classroom constraints, because of the number
of rooms available and because of their respective sizes.
(a) How can this problem be modeled as a machine scheduling problem?
(b) What are the machines?
(c) Are there operator or tooling constraints? If there are such constraints, what are the operators and what

Chapter 3: Service Models Page 2

Ho Chi Minh City International University Scheduling
Industrial Systems Engineering Department Lecturer: Phan Nguyen Ky Phuc

are the tools?

Q5. In the description of a workforce in this chapter it is assumed that a workforce may consist of a number
of different pools that do not overlap. Each pool has its own particular skill set and the skill sets of the
different pools do not overlap. Give a formal presentation of a framework that assumes a fixed number of
skills, say N. Each worker has a subset of all possible skills, However, the skill sets of two different workers
may partially overlap, i.e., they may have some skills in common and each worker may have skill(s) that the
other one does not have. How does the complexity of this framework compare to the case in which the skill
sets do not overlap?
Q6. A company has a central warehouse and a number of clients that have to be supplied from that
warehouse. There is a fleet of trucks available and all distances are known, i.e., distances between clients as
well as between clients and the warehouse. A truck can supply various clients on a single route. However, the
total distance a truck is allowed to cover is bounded from above. The objective is to minimize total distance
traveled by all trucks. Show that this problem is equivalent to a parallel machine scheduling problem with
setup times.

Chapter 3: Service Models Page 3