Optimal appointment scheduling in continuous time: The lag order approximation method |
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| Authors: | Wouter Vink Alex Kuiper Benjamin Kemper Sandjai Bhulai |
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| Affiliation: | 1. McKinsey & Company, Amstel 344, 1017 AS Amsterdam, The Netherlands;2. Institute for Business and Industrial Statistics, University of Amsterdam, Plantage Muidergracht 12, 1018 TV Amsterdam, The Netherlands;3. EY Transaction Advisory Services, Antonio Vivaldistraat 150, 1083 HP Amsterdam, The Netherlands;4. Stochastic Operations Research, Department of Mathematics, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
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| Abstract: | We study appointment scheduling problems in continuous time. A finite number of clients are scheduled such that a function of the waiting time of clients, the idle time of the server, and the lateness of the schedule is minimized. The optimal schedule is notoriously hard to derive within reasonable computation times. Therefore, we develop the lag order approximation method, that sets the client’s optimal appointment time based on only a part of his predecessors. We show that a lag order of two, i.e., taking two predecessors into account, results in nearly optimal schedules within reasonable computation times. We illustrate our approximation method with an appointment scheduling problem in a CT-scan area. |
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| Keywords: | Appointment scheduling Heuristics Lag order approximation method Utility functions |
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