1. (*10 points) Qualitative Queuing Process Design: Consider the following three
ID: 433099 • Letter: 1
Question
1. (*10 points) Qualitative Queuing Process Design: Consider the following three process designs to organize a call center with 12 employees. The center handles calls for two customer types. Type 1 customers call with credit card related questions and type 2 customers call with questions related to the online account opening. On a busy day the call center receives 60 calls per hour from type 1 customers and 30 calls per hour from type 2 customers. It takes on average 2 minutes to service both kinds of calls. Process design 1: 6 employees handle type 1 calls; the other 6 employees handle type 2 calls Process design 2: 8 employees handle type 1 calls; 4 employees type 2 calls. Process design 3: 12 persons (cross-trained) handle all calls. Which of the three process designs leads to the shortest (longest) average waiting time for a random incoming request? Why? (No quantitative calculations are necessary; only a cogent argument is.) a. 1 is the shortest, 2 is the longest b. 2 is the shortest, 1 is the longest c. 3 is the shortest, 2 is the longest d. 2 is the shortest, 3 is the longest e. 3 is the shortest, 1 is the longest f. 1 is the shortest, 3 is the longest g. 3 is the shortest, 1 and 2 are the same h. Cannot be determined (explain why) i. None of the above (explain why)
Explanation / Answer
E – 3 is the shortest, 1 is the longest
The service time is the same for both the types of call. It will take two minutes to answer either type of calls. However, since the distribution of the calls are not known and will happen in random, it is possible that the rate of calls that come for type of calls may vary. By segregating the type of calls to 2 different department we will increase the risk of bottleneck. Naturally, this indicates that a cross trained agent will do better to handle both types of calls. The assumptions is that the cross trained agent will provide exactly the same level of quality and service as the previous design options.
Between the options 1 and 2 for process design we see that that the number of calls for type 1 customers is more than type 2. It is double in fact. Thus the number of resources available to serve them should be equally proportionate. This means there should double the number of employees to handle type 1 call. This is provided in design 2. This shows that the design 2 is better than design 1.
Hence by order of efficiency it should be 3, 2, and 1.
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