Agent-Based System Design for Service Process

Compared with traditional manufacturing scheduling, service process scheduling poses additional 7 challenges attributable to the significant customer involvement in service processes. In services, there are typically 8 no inventoried products, which make the service provider’s capacity more sensitive to dynamic changes. Service 9 process scheduling objectives are also more complicated due to the consideration of customer preferences, customer 10 waiting costs and human resource costs. After describing the Unified Services Theory and analysing its scheduling 11 implications, this paper reviews the research literature on service process scheduling system design with a particular 12 emphasis on agent-based approaches. Major issues in agent-based service process scheduling systems design are 13 discussed and research opportunities are identified. The survey of the literature reveals that despite of many domain14 specific designs in agent-based service process scheduling, there is a lack of general problem formulations, 15 classifications, solution frameworks, and test beds. Constructing these general models for service process 16 scheduling system design will facilitate the collaboration of researchers in this area and guide the effective 17 development of integrated service process scheduling systems. 18