Type of Proposal
Oral presentation
Faculty
Faculty of Engineering
Faculty Sponsor
Dr. Ahmed Azab, azab@uwindsor.ca
Start Date
24-3-2015 2:00 PM
End Date
24-3-2015 2:50 PM
Importance of the Project
The call center operates 24/7 nowadays. With high demand of call centers being outsourced our team has developed an optimization model for companies to make profit with maximum customers being satisfied. As more customers are using the call centers, a number of issues have arisen. Some of the complaints received from customers are about the long waiting times to schedule an appointment or dealing with other customer issues. The managers are concerned about the inefficiency of operations at the call center. Our team has developed the program to solve all the issues that will be discussed in this report. In this report we focus on all the issues they might had and have tried to optimize the problems.
Existing State of Knowledge
Leading experts in this field at the University of Windsor is our Faculty Adviser, Dr. Ahmed Azab and previous Graduate Assistance, Maral Zafar Allahyari. We developed a system that's similar to information systems used for assignments, in our case, assignment of employees in a call center.
Research Question
How to optimize the cost of running an information system.
Methodology
In this project, we are solving liner assignment problem where both full time and part time employers of the call center are being assigned to various time slots of a work day. A system analysis and application have been adopted to develop the decision support system to solve such a problem. System initiation has been performed where both IDEF and context model have been developed. System analysis followed by performing problem analysis, requirement analysis and logical design. Fishbone diagram process mapping and all mathematical problem have been developed tailored; the give model has been generalized to feed the general requirement of any assignment problem. Physical design is performed and flowcharts have been written for very small model of the system. For system construction and implementation, procedural programming have been used; however, VBA (Visual Basics for Applications) and RSP (Risk solver platform) object have been used for both properties and method. The application programming interfaces for the RSP solver have been called from within the Excel VBA script and forms, to automate the process of solving mathematical programming mode.
Your Findings
From running the solver, we we’re able to identify and develop the optimal cost of operating the call center. This means that by allocating the right number of employees (full-time and part-time) for the seven time slots based on the activity of each slot (number of calls received), the call center would operate on a cost of that’s provided in the excel file which will be presented at the conference. Any changes made to parameters; Decision Variables and Constraints, would affect the Objective Function. There are various tools and methods out there that are yet to be implemented or even be discovered which will be able take optimization to a whole different level.
Staff Management of a Call Center using System Analysis and design