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

• Main Authors: TANG, Yue, JIANG, Houyuan, XIE, Jingui, ZHENG, Zhichao
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Rescheduling; No-show; Appointment; Queue; Markov decision process; Business Administration, Management, and Operations; Management Information Systems; Operations and Supply Chain Management
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/6961
• Institution: Singapore Management University

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.