Analysing stochastic call demand with time varying parameters
Date
2005-10-14
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
In spite of increasingly sophisticated workforce management tools, a significant gap remains between the goal of effective staffing and
the present difficulty predicting the stochastic demand of inbound calls. We have investigated the hypothesized nonhomogeneous Poisson
process model of modem pool callers of the University community. In our case, we tested if the arrivals could be approximated by a piecewise constant rate over short intervals. For each of 1 and 10-minute intervals, based on the close relationship between the Poisson process and the exponential distribution, the test results did not show any sign of homogeneous Poisson process. We have examined the hypothesis of a nonhomogeneous Poisson process by a transformed statistic. Quantitative and graphical goodness-of-fit tests have confirmed nonhomogeneous Poisson process. Further analysis on the intensity function revealed that linear rate intensity was woefully inadequate in predicting time varying arrivals. For sinusoidal rate model, difficulty arose in setting the period parameter. Spline models, as an alternative to parametric modelling, had more control of balance between data fitting and
smoothness, which was appealing to our analysis on call arrival process.
Description
Keywords
smoothing spline, spline regression, time-varying arrivals, call centre staffing, goodness-of-fit tests
Citation
Degree
Master of Science (M.Sc.)
Department
Mathematics and Statistics
Program
Mathematics and Statistics