Staff Scheduling Using Multi-Qualification Deployment Plans
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing staff scheduling methods in call centers often lead to personnel overstaffing due to unrealistic assumptions, such as the Erlang C-formula, which fails to account for varying staff qualifications and irregular call distributions, resulting in inefficient resource allocation and increased costs.
Innovation Solution
A method that generates deployment plans for staff members with single or multiple qualifications using a target function to assess the quality of assignments, aiming to minimize the difference between deployed staff and calculated requirements, thereby optimizing staff allocation and improving service quality.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the Erlang C-formula is used to calculate staff requirements, then the calculation is simple and fast, but it leads to personnel overstaffing due to unrealistic assumptions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the parameters used in staff requirement calculation from the simplified Erlang C-formula parameters to more realistic parameters that account for varying staff qualifications and irregular call distributions. This involves using multiple qualification levels and more accurate statistical models to calculate staff requirements, thereby reducing overstaffing while maintaining service quality.
2Ease of operation
If staff members are assigned to specific job types based on single qualifications, then the assignment is simple, but it reduces adaptability to varying call distributions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements multi-functionality by enabling staff members to be assigned to multiple job types based on their qualifications. Instead of restricting each staff member to a single job type, the system allows staff with different qualification levels to handle various call types, thereby increasing adaptability to varying call distributions while maintaining manageable assignment complexity through structured qualification frameworks.
3Ease of manufacture
If manual scheduling based on experience values is used, then the process is simple to implement, but it leads to suboptimal resource allocation and increased costs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements feedback mechanisms that use historical call data and performance metrics to continuously improve staff scheduling decisions. The system analyzes past call distributions, staff performance, and service quality metrics to provide feedback for optimizing future assignments, thereby moving from static experience-based scheduling to dynamic data-driven scheduling that improves resource allocation efficiency while remaining implementable.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods are provided of creating a deployment plan for staff members with single or multiple qualification for performing activities, each activity requiring at least a single qualification. The methods include the following operations performed by a computer: repeatedly generating a deployment plan assignment of the staff members, and assessing a quality of the assignment generated using a target function, using one of the assignments on the basis of the assessment of the quality as the assignment representing the deployment plan, wherein the target function comprises a term that determines the quality of the assignments, such that the smaller the difference is between the number of the staff members deployed to the activities and the calculated total staff member requirement of the activities the higher the quality of the assignment.