Title :
Optimizing Bernoulli routing policies for balancing loads on call centers and minimizing transmission costs
Author :
Servi, L.D. ; Humair, Salal
Author_Institution :
Adv. Syst. Lab., GTE Labs. Inc., Waltham, MA, USA
Abstract :
We address the problem of assigning probabilities at discrete time instants for routing toll-free calls to a given set of call centers in order to minimize a weighted sum of transmission costs and load variability at the call centers during the next time interval. We model the problem as a tripartite graph and decompose the problem of finding the optimal probability assignment in the graph into an estimation problem and a convex quadratic program problem. Using a heuristic that uses gradient information around a given probability assignment we further address a practical variant in which the number of probability assignments that can be changed for each constrained instant
Keywords :
call centres; convex programming; graph theory; heuristic programming; minimisation; probability; quadratic programming; telecommunication network routing; Bernoulli routing policy optimization; call center load balancing; convex quadratic program problem; estimation problem; gradient information; heuristic; load variability; optimal probability assignment decomposition; toll-free call routing; transmission cost minimization; tripartite graph; Cost function; Decision trees; Laboratories; Load management; Network servers; Operations research; Routing; Telecommunication traffic; Time factors; Traffic control;
Conference_Titel :
Decision and Control, 1998. Proceedings of the 37th IEEE Conference on
Conference_Location :
Tampa, FL
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-4394-8
DOI :
10.1109/CDC.1998.758530