Spatial Capacity Planning
研究了空间服务系统(如网约车平台)中容量与绩效的关系,发现传统平方根安全人员配置规则在空间系统中无法平衡利用率和等待时间,需采用更高的安全系数。
We study the relationship between capacity and performance for a service firm with spatial operations, in the sense that requests arrive with origin-destination pairs. An example of such a system is a ride-hailing platform in which each customer arrives in the system with the need to travel from an origin to a destination. We propose a parsimonious representation of a spatial multiserver system through a state-dependent queueing model that captures spatial frictions as well as spatial economies of scale through the service rate. In a classical [Formula: see text] queueing model, the square root safety (SRS) staffing rule is known to balance server utilization and customer wait times. By contrast, we find that the SRS rule does not lead to such a balance in spatial systems. In a spatial environment, pick-up times increase the load in the system; furthermore, they are an endogenous source of extra workload that leads the system to only operate efficiently if there is sufficient imbalance between supply and demand. In heavy traffic, we derive the mapping from load to operating regimes and establish implications on various metrics of interest. In particular, to obtain a balance of utilization and wait times, the service firm should use a higher safety factor, proportional to the offered load to the power of [Formula: see text]. We also discuss implications of these results for general systems.