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An Experimental Comparison of Dispatching Rules for Field Service Support *
Author(s) -
Hill Arthur V.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
decision sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.238
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1540-5915
pISSN - 0011-7315
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5915.1992.tb00386.x
Subject(s) - tardiness , computer science , service (business) , response time , operations research , field (mathematics) , due date , queue , marketing , business , job shop scheduling , engineering , computer network , mathematics , operating system , routing (electronic design automation) , pure mathematics
Field service repair management is increasing in importance as “high tech” machines such as computers, communication systems, and copy machines are becoming more popular and more widely disbursed geographically. Complicating the management of these systems are response time performance guarantees (e.g., 8‐hour response time), which are a popular marketing tool for many field service businesses [21]. These response time), guarantees especially complicate the field service dispatching problem. With response time guarantees, dispatchers must consider travel times and other issues to determine which call should be assigned to an available technician. This research proposes several dispatching rules that might be applied for dispatching sequential‐trip technicians in this environment and compares these rules in a simulation experiment to determine which rule is best in terms of average tardiness. The proposed composite travel time‐expiration time rule was found to be the best on average tardiness performance and on all other tardiness‐related measures. Given the increased importance of tardiness performance in field service organizations, the proposed composite rule appears to have promise.