How to Enable Multiple Skill Learning in a SLA Constrained Service System
03 Nov 2014-pp 260-274
TL;DR: A model for on-job training which extends the business process for IT service delivery and provides insights into what kind of planning and dispatch policies should be practiced for achieving the desired goals of multi-skill learning and SLA success.
Abstract: In a knowledge based service system like IT services, the requirements of skills to service customer requests keep changing with time. The service workers are expected to learn the required skills very quickly and become productive. Due to high attrition rate and demand, service workers are given basic class room training and then rest of the training is carried out on-job. When a service worker learns multiple skills simultaneously, learning slows down due to factors like forgetting and interference. At the same time, the organization needs to meet service level agreements (SLA). We have developed a model for on-job training which extends the business process for IT service delivery. The key idea is to model learning, forgetting and interference in service time estimation to get realistic service times. Accurate estimation of service time taken by a service worker to resolve the service tickets helps in resource allocation and planning decisions for achieving the desired objectives of upskilling and SLA success. The simulation of execution of the augmented business process provides insights into what kind of planning and dispatch policies should be practiced for achieving the desired goals of multi-skill learning and SLA success.
References
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TL;DR: It is demonstrated that the control rule is superior to the good intuitive rule from the point of view of additional stability that is obtained from less variability in the work force levels and offered managerial implications of this additional stability using the computational results.
53 citations
"How to Enable Multiple Skill Learni..." refers background in this paper
...Learning has also been looked at in the context of human resource planning [4], [3], where there is a need to forecast the future skill mix and levels required, as well as in context of dynamic environments like call centers[12], where both and learning and turnover are captured to solve the long and medium term staffing problem....
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02 May 2011
TL;DR: A learning architecture for a humanoid robot soccer agent that has been fully deployed and tested within the RoboCup 3D simulation environment is presented and a framework for optimizing skills in conjunction with one another is described, a little-understood problem with substantial practical significance.
Abstract: In several realistic domains an agent's behavior is composed of multiple interdependent skills. For example, consider a humanoid robot that must play soccer, as is the focus of this paper. In order to succeed, it is clear that the robot needs to walk quickly, turn sharply, and kick the ball far. However, these individual skills are ineffective if the robot falls down when switching from walking to turning, or if it cannot position itself behind the ball for a kick.This paper presents a learning architecture for a humanoid robot soccer agent that has been fully deployed and tested within the RoboCup 3D simulation environment. First, we demonstrate that individual skills such as walking and turning can be parameterized and optimized to match the best performance statistics reported in the literature. These results are achieved through effective use of the CMA-ES optimization algorithm. Next, we describe a framework for optimizing skills in conjunction with one another, a little-understood problem with substantial practical significance. Over several phases of learning, a total of roughly 100--150 parameters are optimized. Detailed experiments show that an agent thus optimized performs comparably with the top teams from the RoboCup 2010 competitions, while taking relatively few man-hours for development.
50 citations
"How to Enable Multiple Skill Learni..." refers background in this paper
...It is also shown that [24] optimizing skills in isolation does not necessarily benefit their combined operation....
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TL;DR: A model is suggested that combines 3 basic findings, namely, that single memory traces decay according to a power function of the retention interval, that aggregated memory traces can be combined by integration, and that the time to produce a unit can be described by a diffusion process on the memory trace.
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43 citations
IBM1
TL;DR: A discrete event simulation model of a service system in the data-center management domain is presented and it is observed that the simulation-based approach incorporates intricacies of service systems and allows comparative analysis of dispatching policies leading to more accurate decisions on labor staffing.
Abstract: A service system is an organization of the resources and processes, which interacts with the customer and produces service outcomes. Since a majority of the service systems are labor-intensive, the main re-sources are the service workers. Designing such service systems is nontrivial due to a large number of parameters and variations, but crucial for business decisions such as labor staffing. The most important design point of a service system is how and when service requests are assigned to service workers a.k.a. dispatching policy. This paper presents a framework for evaluation of dispatching policies in service systems. A discrete event simulation model of a service system in the data-center management domain is presented. We evaluate four dispatching policies on five real-life service systems. We observe that the simulation-based approach incorporates intricacies of service systems and allows comparative analysis of dispatching policies leading to more accurate decisions on labor staffing.
20 citations
"How to Enable Multiple Skill Learni..." refers background or methods in this paper
...A discrete event simulation [1] of the ITIM process augmented with training has been used to gain insights into the proposed training model....
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...The time taken by a SW at any level to complete an SR is stochastic and is shown [1] to follow a lognormal distribution for a single skill....
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IBM1
TL;DR: A novel resource model that incorporates the concepts of resource communities and social positions is presented that is used to accelerate the collaboration between various work groups by dedicating collaborative units in the task of incident resolution.
Abstract: Knowledge-intensive business processes require knowledge workers to collaborate on complex activities. Social network analysis is increasingly being applied in organizations to understand the underlying interaction patterns between teams and foster meaningful collaboration. The social positions of a worker, i.e. the role played in working with others, can be identified through analyzing process logs to assist effective collaboration. In this paper, we present a novel resource model that incorporates the concepts of resource communities and social positions. We demonstrate our resource model through a real industry process - IT incident management process. This socially enhanced resource model is also used to accelerate the collaboration between various work groups by dedicating collaborative units in the task of incident resolution.
16 citations
"How to Enable Multiple Skill Learni..." refers methods in this paper
...We have built upon the ITIM process studied in [18] which is revisited briefly as follows....
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