Scheduling and staffing strategic servers
strategic servers system performance Journal reviews Call centers Crowdsourcing Cloud computing Enterprise data centers … service systems
strategic servers system performance Journal reviews Call centers Crowdsourcing Cloud computing Enterprise data centers … service systems This talk: Impact of strategic servers on optimal system design Classic Queueing: Assumes fixed (arrival and) service rates, fixed control/policies. Queueing games: Strategic arrivals Service/price competition [Hassin and Haviv 2003] Scheduling and staffing strategic servers
Outline The M/M/1 Queue – a simple example Model for a strategic server The M/M/N Queue Classic policies in non-strategic setting Impact of strategic servers SchedulingStaffing which idle server gets the next job? how many servers to hire?
M/M/1/FCFS strategic server idleness cost utility function LHS RHS
Outline The M/M/1 queue – a simple example Model for a strategic server The strategic M/M/N queue Classic policies in non-strategic setting Impact of strategic servers SchedulingStaffing
M/M/N/FCFS strategic servers scheduling symmetric Nash equilibrium Nash equilibrium existence? performance? Blue for strategic service rates Yellow for control/policy parameters
Outline The M/M/1 queue – a simple example Model for a strategic server The strategic M/M/N queue Classic policies in non-strategic setting Impact of strategic servers SchedulingStaffing
M/M/N/FCFS scheduling When servers are not strategic… [Lin et al. 1984] [Véricourt et al. 2005] [Armony 2005] [Atar 2008] [Armony et al. 2010]
M/M/N/FCFS scheduling Q: Which policy does better – FSF or its counterpart, SSF? Theorem: No symmetric equilibrium exists under either FSF or SSF. Q: How about Longest-Idle-Server-First (LISF)? Theorem: All idle-time-order-based policies result in the same symmetric equilibrium as Random. Q: Can we do better than Random? Answer: Yes! (ask me later!)
M/M/N/FCFS Random First order condition:
Problem: This is a mess!!!
Outline The M/M/1 queue – a simple example Model for a strategic server The strategic M/M/N queue Classic policies in non-strategic setting Impact of strategic servers SchedulingStaffing
M/M/N/FCFS When servers are not strategic… Random staffing asymptotically optimal [Borst et al. 2004]
M/M/N/FCFS Random staffing When servers are strategic… Problem: Explicit expression unknown!
M/M/N/FCFS Random staffing When servers are strategic… (ask me later!)
Concluding remarks We need to rethink optimal system design when servers are strategic! M/M/N/FCFS Random loss of efficiency? $ $$$$ $$ ? ?
Scheduling and staffing strategic servers