This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Progam award will develop new methods for design, control, performance analysis, and pricing of differentiated services in technologically advanced service operations. Service differentiation is fundamental to the operation of most modern service systems as it allows diverse requirements of businesses and customers to be met by means of service classes with varying quality grades. In addition, it supports the economic viability of such services. Examples of key questions that will be addressed by this proposal include the following: 1) How many agents should be used to staff a large telephone call center to meet service level constraints across multiple customer classes? 2) How should pricing of Internet-based information services account for standard quality grades (e.g., ``best-effort'' and ``guaranteed'' connections)? 3) How should web-hosting service providers verify and monitor a heterogenous mix of service levels dictated by their e-business clients?
This investigation ranges from fundamental formulation and analysis of models, to more applied work in collaboration with industry partners. The research agenda is broad and interdisciplinary, integrating ideas from statistics, economics, stochastic control, queueing theory, optimization, and simulation. Methods developed in this award should lead to managerial insights and improved problem solving techniques that can potentially affect the competitive advantage of enterprises operating in the service sector. Important synergies with related scientific fields should produce contributions in the areas of applied probability, statistics, risk management, and revenue management. Results will be incorporated into teaching materials and new courses, and will be widely disseminated to academia and industry. In addition to supporting the PI's research, this project will also support doctoral students and foster research interactions with industry.
