Optimal Scheduling and Incentive Compatible Pricing for a Service System with Quality of Service Guarantees

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hsu, Vernon N.; Xu, Susan H.; Jukic, Boris
• 署名单位: Chinese University of Hong Kong; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park; Clarkson University
• 刊物名称: M&SOM-MANUFACTURING & SERVICE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1523-4614
• DOI: 10.1287/msom.1080.0226
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 375-396
• 关键词: capacity planning and investment; technology management and process design; service operations

摘要

This paper proposes a resource allocation and pricing mechanism for a service system that serves multiple classes of jobs within an organization. Each class of service request is subject to a class-dependent quality of service (QoS) guarantee on the expected delay bound, which may be imposed by business rules in an organization or other application-specific technical constraints. We develop an extension of a resource allocation and pricing mechanism for an M/M/1 system. In contrast to the system without the QoS guarantee, where a fixed priority scheduling policy-known as the c mu rule-is optimal, we show that the system may need to adopt a more general randomized priority scheduling policy to maximize the overall system profit. We also develop a transfer pricing scheme that is both optimal and incentive compatible, allowing users to act in their self-interests while collectively achieving the system optimum. We show that the pricing scheme with the QoS guarantee depends on the scheduling policy implemented and has different characteristics from that without the QoS guarantee.