The golden rule of staffing in contact centers
We can all agree, a no. 1 source of frustration is the endless waiting on hold for a call center agent to pick up the phone. Interestingly, over the last 111 years mathematicians have been working on a vast theory to solve this call center inefficiency.
How uncertainty can make traffic run smoother
In 2014, in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, the average person spend approximately 40 hours in a traffic jam - that is 5 work days! In this article, I will explain how mathematical models with uncertainty help traffic engineers to make decisions that improve traffic.
Traffic lights no longer needed: back to the future
Traffic lights are currently an annoying but inevitable part of traffic. With the introduction of self-driving cars however, can we avoid having to wait for a red light ever again?
Consult a mathematician before you visit Disneyland
You don’t want to wait in a theme park? We hired a mathematician to tell you the tips and tricks!
Can flipping the queue spare you time?
How would you react if we would tell you that serving the last customer in the queue in beneficial?
Traffic congestion: Braess' Paradox
Can you imagine that the, seemingly innocent and quite natural, idea to build more roads in order to solve the traffic problem can be sometimes quite a bad idea.
Traffic congestion: Optimal tolling schemes
Congested road networks are a big problem in many countries. Building more roads is not always the best solution to solve this issue. One of the reasons for this is that drivers behave selfishly
Layered networks III: The math behind manufacturing plants design
Earlier, we have seen that layered queueing networks are found in manufacturing plants, as well as many other applications in society. The math behind such networks is much more challenging than traditional queueing networks.
Layered networks II: The layered character of manufacturing plants
We have seen that queueing networks can be a great aid to answering such design questions. In this article, we look more closely at what queueing networks in manufacturing plants look like. It turns out that they have a very distinctive feature in that they are layered.
Traffic congestion: Tolls
One way to mitigate the consequences of drivers' selfish behavior, is by introducing tolls (or taxes) on certain parts of the road network. This is also known as road pricing.