Services Science, Engineering and Management Conference, at IBM Palisades, October 6-7

These participant's notes were created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. These notes have been contributed by David Ing (daviding@systemicbusiness.org) at the Systemic Business Community ( http://systemicbusiness.org ).

Avishai Mandelbaum, Technion, Israel, "Service Engineering: Data-Based Research and Teaching in Suppot of Service Management"

Started 13 years ago, moving from Stanford to Israel

• Background: math, networks, queuing theory
• Started with a little consulting, research
• Started a research seminar
• Supplemented with data
• Compulsory course in industrial engineering

Appreciate simple, useful models

• Simple model might still require deep analysis

With Wharton, started a repository for call centers: Models for Call Center Analysis

• 2.5 years, 220M calls handled by a machine, 40M call handled by a person

Find going back to basic research paradigm (as in physics, biology): measure, model, experiment, validate, refine

Yield scientifically-based design principles

Will focus on one model for this talk: staffing problem

• 3 to 6 billion people answering phones
• Staffing based on an Erlang-C model (M/M/n), 1913
• Another model: Palm/Erlang-A, simple but not too simple

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