Service level

About: Service level is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 7647 publications have been published within this topic receiving 126093 citations. The topic is also known as: service level.

Information Technology in Supply Chain Management

Abstract: This paper focuses the role of Information technology (IT) in supply chain management. It also highlights the contribution of IT in helping to restructure the entire distribution set up to achieve higher service levels and lower inventory and lower supply chain costs. The broad strategic directions which need to be supported by the IT strategy are increasing of frequency of receipts/dispatch, holding materials further up the supply chain and crashing the various lead times. Critical IT contributions and implementations are discussed. Fundamental changes have occurred in today's economy. These changes alter the relationship we have with our customers, our suppliers, our business partners and our colleagues. It also describes how IT developments have presented companies with unprecedented opportunities to gain competitive advantage. So IT investment is the pre-requisite thing for each firm in order to sustain in the market.

Method for supporting on-demand performance

Abstract: A method is disclosed for managing the performance of shared computing resources in furtherance of delivering on-demand IT services to multiple customers. The inventive method comprises predicting the performance of resources allocated among the customers to minimize performance related problems; preventing performance related problems by evaluating the impact of changes in resource allocations; reacting to performance alerts to resolve performance related problems; and determining the appropriate level of resource performance needed in service level agreements, and that these requirements detailed in the service level agreements are achieved. This Performance Management method ensures that the demands of the customers are not affected by the allocation and utilization of the shared IT resources.

Cell selection based on user profile in cellular radio system

Abstract: Cellular radio system base stations (10, 12) offer various service levels and transmit control messages (14) indicating said service levels. Terminals (20) store information (22) about previous connections and, based on that information or on their own capability, produce a prediction on the service level required by the next connection. A terminal selects a cell such that the service level in the cell matches the terminal's prediction on the service level required.

Long-term vehicle reservations in one-way free-floating carsharing systems: A variable quality of service model

Abstract: Reservations in daily services can improve user satisfaction, and give additional information about the demand patterns to the operators. However, providing reservations to carsharing clients is difficult. While carsharing is especially convenient if it is allowing one-way trips and vehicle drop-off anywhere in the service area (called free-floating), this flexibility increases management complexity because of vehicle stock imbalance. Most of the commercial providers of free-floating carsharing offer reservations under highly restrictive terms, for example only up to 30 min in advance. In this paper, we propose an innovative reservation enforcement technique that allows substantially longer reservation times while keeping the system profitable and achieving high service quality. A simple way to enforce reservations is locking vehicles until the departure time of a client. However, it comes at the cost of idling vehicles that could be used by other users and decreasing the revenue. Our approach, called relocations-based reservation enforcement method (R-BR) combines vehicle locking and relocation movements. It locks vehicles only a short time before the trip departure if a suitable vehicle is close enough due to the natural trip patterns. If no such vehicle is available, a car is relocated from another place. Further, we propose a variable quality of service (QoS) model in which the guaranteed radius around the user within which the reserved vehicle will be placed, and the maximum allowed reservation time before the departure depends on the zone of trip departure. A simulation-based optimization is used whereby the carsharing operation is simulated and optimized using an iterated local search (ILS) metaheuristic for adjustment of service level parameters. The proposed technique is tested on a set of artificial problem examples and a case study of a simulated working day in the Lisbon Municipality, Portugal. Results show that the proposed R-BR method is substantially better than the simple vehicle locking when the constant QoS approach is used and that the devised ILS metaheuristic can further increase the system performance, especially with high trip volumes.

Dynamic feedback control of resources in computing environments

Abstract: A method for controlling resource allocation is provided. The method includes determining a service metric associated with a first application, wherein the first application is associated with one or more virtual machines. The method further includes comparing the service metric to an application specific service level goal associated with the first application and modifying a resource allocation associated with the first application at one or more of the virtual machines.