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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.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the pharmacy supply chain and current managerial practices in a case hospital, examine the often conflicting goals in decision making amongst the various stakeholders, and explore the managerial tradeoffs present at the operational, tactical, and strategic levels of decision making.
Abstract: Pharmaceuticals represent a large portion of the costs in the healthcare industry due to the significant costs of these products and their storage and control requirements. In this work we discuss the pharmacy supply chain and current managerial practices in a case hospital, examine the often conflicting goals in decision making amongst the various stakeholders, and explore the managerial tradeoffs present at the operational, tactical, and strategic levels of decision making. We focus on the inventory management at a local storage unit within an individual Care Unit (CU). For the operational inventory decision we provide the reorder point and order up to level (calledmin and max par levels) that control the automated ordering system. These parameters are based on a near-optimal allocation policy of cycle stock and safety stock under storage space constraint. Tactical decision support focuses on the relevant tradeoffs amongst three key performance indicators: the expected number of daily refills, the service level, and the storage space utilization. We analyze the tradeoffs amongst the refill workload, the emergency workload, and the variety of drugs offered (called formulary). The resulting decision support tool facilitates improvements to the current management practices.

169 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a multi-period supply chain network design problem is addressed, where a target is set for the return on investment and the risk of falling below it is measured and accounted for.
Abstract: In this paper, a multi-period supply chain network design problem is addressed. Several aspects of practical relevance are considered such as those related with the financial decisions that must be accounted for by a company managing a supply chain. The decisions to be made comprise the location of the facilities, the flow of commodities and the investments to make in alternative activities to those directly related with the supply chain design. Uncertainty is assumed for demand and interest rates, which is described by a set of scenarios. Therefore, for the entire planning horizon, a tree of scenarios is built. A target is set for the return on investment and the risk of falling below it is measured and accounted for. The service level is also measured and included in the objective function. The problem is formulated as a multi-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear programming problem. The goal is to maximize the total financial benefit. An alternative formulation which is based upon the paths in the scenario tree is also proposed. A methodology for measuring the value of the stochastic solution in this problem is discussed. Computational tests using randomly generated data are presented showing that the stochastic approach is worth considering in these types of problems.

168 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce the concept of internal service recovery, defined as what the organisation does to make internal customers (front-line employees), who have recovered external customers from service failure, feel less frustrated and more confident of their ability to deal with dissatisfied customers in the future.
Abstract: This paper introduces the concept of “internal service recovery” defined as what the organisation does to make internal customers (front‐line employees), who have recovered external customers from service failure, feel less frustrated and more confident of their ability to deal with dissatisfied customers in the future. Internal service recovery often requires reducing employees’ feelings of low perceived control and helplessness. The results from an exploratory study of staff and managers in four branches of a UK bank shows that although the concept and practice of external service recovery is well understood, internal reovery is not. It is suggested that the “traditional” ingredients of external recovery (response, information, action and compensation) may be appropriate for the internal customer. It is also suggested that the passive, alienated employee behaviour associated with “learned helplessness” may need to be addressed through additional interventions. The purpose of the paper is to encourage both researchers and managers to examine how the effectiveness of internal service recovery affects external service recovery and the satisfaction of both employees and customers.

168 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A taxonomy for application prediction models is presented that investigates main characteristics and challenges of the different models and discusses open research issues and future trends of the application prediction.

168 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper presents the design rationale of a business-objectives-based utility computing SLA management system, called SAM, along with implementation experiences.
Abstract: It has become increasingly desirable for companies worldwide to outsource their complex e-business infrastructure under the utility computing paradigm by means of service level agreements (SLAs). A successful utility computing provider must be able not only to satisfy its customers' demand for high service-quality standards, but also to fulfill its service-quality commitments based upon business objectives (e.g., cost-effectively minimizing the exposed business impact of service level violations). This paper presents the design rationale of a business-objectives-based utility computing SLA management system, called SAM, along with implementation experiences.

166 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202321
202257
2021257
2020350
2019413
2018415