Scheduling is an important process that helps to meet consumers’ demands. In the service industry, it is complicated because service demand metrics, including the type of service, timing, and quantity, are challenging to forecast owing to their variability (Dolgui et al., 2019). However, supervisors use several scheduling procedures such as First Come First Serve (FCFS), priority, appointment, reservation, and back-ordering techniques. For example, most restaurants and hotels utilize the FCFS scheduling procedure where customers are served based on their arrival times. Managers use this approach because consumers visit hotels at different times. Besides, restaurants’ administrators also apply reservation scheduling, thus enabling a customer or a group of clients to provide prior notification about their intention to acquire the facility’s services. In this way, hotel managers ensure cooks and attendants fulfill the specifications provided during the booking process. The method is also used by companies offering meeting room services because clients must make their bookings earlier to allow sufficient time for preparations.
In a hospital setting, physicians and consultants utilize appointment scheduling to plan their work and avoid wasting patients’ time. Other healthcare providers use a priority approach, which allows patients to be served based on the emergency of their conditions. According to Dolgui et al. (2019), the banking sector has embraced the FCFS scheduling procedure for a long time because consumers demand services at different times. Bank executives also give appointments to clients depositing or withdrawing large amounts of money. On their part, airlines use appointment or back-ordering scheduling methods to meet their clients’ needs. For example, if there is no flight to a particular country, the service may be back-ordered when it is available. Therefore, scheduling procedures vary across various services, and customers must understand different service providers’ operations.
Reference
Dolgui, A., Ivanov, D., Sethi, S. P., & Sokolov, B. (2019). Scheduling in production, supply chain, and industry systems by optimal control: Fundamentals, state-of-the-art, and applications. International Journal of Production Research, 57(2), 411-432. Web.