title: Computing the expected cost of an appointment schedule for statistically identical customers with probabilistic service times.
abstract: A cogent method is presented for computing the expected cost of an appointment schedule where customers are statistically identical, the service time distribution has known mean and variance, and customer no-shows occur with time-dependent probability. The approach is computationally efficient and can be easily implemented to evaluate candidate schedules within a schedule optimization algorithm.
authors.affiliation: CenturyLink, Inc., Boulder, CO 80301, USA.
authors.forename: Dennis C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Dietz
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001071:Appointments and Schedules; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical