Topic: “Theompirical” Research of Service Systems (A Case Study of Hospitals and Call Centres )

Speaker: Avishai Mandelbaum, Professor of Service Engineering, Operations Research and Statistics, Technion, ISRAEL

Date: Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Time: 16:15-17:30

Venue: Governing Board Meeting Room, Dao Yuan Building

Language: English

        Speaker Profile:

        Prof. Avishai Mandelbaum is Benjamin & Florence Free Professor of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management (IE&M) at Technion, Israel. He received his B.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science and an M.A. in Statistics, both summa cum laude from Tel Aviv University. He did his Ph.D. in Operations Research at Cornell University. After graduation, in 1983, he joined the School of Business at Stanford University. He returned to Technion in 1991 and served as Dean of IE&M from 2015 to 2018.

        As an INFORMS Fellow, Prof. Mandelbaum serves as Associate Editor for a number of leading journals in his field. Over the past years, he has been distinguished with numerous awards, including Yanai Prize for Academic Excellence at the Technion, as a tribute to his contribution to teaching and research.. His research interest has covered stochastic models (analysis, asymptotics, control) and statistics, with applications to queueing theory/science and service systems (as in teleservice and hospitals).

        Prof. Mandelbaum is also the founder and the director of the Technion SEE (Service Enterprise Engineering) Laboratory. Since its inception in 2007, this lab has been dedicated to collecting unique service operation date and maintaining its database, of which, the data granularity is refined to the level of individual customer service transaction (event logs). Through its database, SEE Lab has been supporting worldwide research and teaching of Service Science, Engineering and Management.

        Abstract:

        The speaker will share with us his personal research journey in the field of service systems, including hospitals, call centers, banks, and courts. Often, he views such systems through the lens of a queuing theorist who puts congestion into analysis. Sometimes, he employs OR perspectives, instead of financial, psychological or clinical performances, to examine these service systems. 

        A tradeoff between quality and efficiency stands as the core of each service operation, to which point Queuing Theory proves to be highly inspiring. Under the light shed by Queuing and its extended theories, I have managed to trace out invaluable methods as to the portrayal and analysis of complex service realities.

        The ultimate goal of Prof. Mandelbaum’s research project is to support the modeling and design of service operations, as well as controlling and predicting their performances. The research shall be conducted through real-time automated service system data models. Prerequisites include measurements of individual events (e.g. patient-physician transactions), which forms the basis for drawing inferences on model primitives, structure and protocols.

        Up to the present, the above goal has been realized at the Technion SEE Laboratory.