Title: Capacity management of an electricity service centre using simulation

Authors: Sony Michael, V. Mariappan

Addresses: Department of Electricity, Margao, Goa 403601, India. ' Roever Engineering College, Anna University, Perambalur 621212, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: In today|s competitive power market integrated with industrial growth, capacity management becomes a perennial technical issue. Power utilities lose customers when they lack sufficient capacity to provide their demanded service which severely affects the business process of the industries. Interruption time is one of the key characteristics of quality service and customer satisfaction. Higher the frequency of it may even force customer to switch over, resulting in a situation of loss of customer. While additional capacity improves service quality, but the cost for providing capacity increases. Electrical service centre of Goa Electricity Department is a customer complaint redressing mechanism hence its modelling becomes essential for investigating its efficacy. Thus the whole scenario gets placed in non-exponential and dynamic, wherein the classical stochastic models become transcendental. Using discrete event simulation, the working of electrical customer service centre was modelled and coded in general purposes simulation system.

Keywords: process oriented approach; system simulation; service modelling; GPSS; discrete event simulation; electricity service centres; power interruptions; business process simulation; capacity management; customer satisfaction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2011.041806

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2011 Vol.8 No.4, pp.472 - 491

Published online: 31 Jan 2015 *

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