Staffing Multiskill Call Centers via Linear Programming and Simulation
研究用整数规划与仿真结合的方法，最小化多技能呼叫中心的人员成本，同时满足服务水平要求，并针对大规模实例提出实用启发式算法。
We study an iterative cutting-plane algorithm on an integer program for minimizing the staffing costs of a multiskill call center subject to service-level requirements that are estimated by simulation. We solve a sample average version of the problem, where the service levels are expressed as functions of the staffing for a fixed sequence of random numbers driving the simulation. An optimal solution of this sample problem is also an optimal solution to the original problem when the sample size is large enough. Several difficulties are encountered when solving the sample problem, especially for large problem instances, and we propose practical heuristics to deal with these difficulties. We report numerical experiments with examples of different sizes. The largest example corresponds to a real-life call center with 65 types of calls and 89 types of agents (skill groups).