Title: Dynamic routing of customers with QoS rank among heterogeneous servers

Authors: Jafar Razmi, Seyed Behrouz Khodadadi

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, P.O. Box 11155-45632, Tehran, Iran. ' Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, P.O. Box 11155-45632, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: This paper is concerned with routing problem with consideration of quality of service (QoS). In the absence of comprehensive analytical methods in this area because of high complexity of such systems, managers need applied approaches to help them in making appropriate routing decisions. We consider a set of n heterogeneous servers which differ in service time and QoS. Customers are also divided into m levels with regard to their service ranks. We present a threshold policy for heterogeneous servers (TPHS) which depends on number of different customers in the queues as a practical and flexible dynamic routing policy. Two performance measures are discussed: the QoS and the average waiting time (AWT). The TPHS is compared with both a static routing policy which maximises the QoS level and the minimum expected delay (MED) policy which minimises the AWT in the queues. The TPHS is optimised using stochastic simulated annealing (SSA). Numerical example validate that the proposed TPHS is more effective than other policies if both measures are regarded.

Keywords: dynamic routing; threshold policies; heterogeneous servers; quality of service; QoS; average waiting times; minimum expected delay; uncertainty; simulation; stochastic simulated annealing; service times; service ranks; queues; performance measures; static routing; customer relationship management; e-CRM; electronic CRM; SCM; supply chain management; decision making; multivariate techniques; customer services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJECRM.2010.036182

International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 2010 Vol.4 No.4, pp.323 - 339

Published online: 27 Oct 2010 *

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