From the category archives:

call center and queueing

Attitude and the Pyschology of Queueing

by Pete Abilla February 2, 2008
This entry is part 20 of 28 in the series queueing theory

I took the kids to see a movie at a nearby dollar theater many weeks ago.  We saw Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and some parts of that movie has stayed with me.  I thought that the movie was actually very good: it was an overall very good feel-good movie, with a very good message.  One [...]

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Queueing, Waiting, Haunted Houses, & Halloween

by Pete Abilla October 23, 2007

This weekend my wife and I waited in the cold, wet, Utah winter weather to go through a haunted house — The Castle of Chaos.  In the course of trying to enjoy an annual American holiday tradition — Halloween — I received another lesson on the Psychology of Queueing instead. Before I tell my story, [...]

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Shmula Now at eBay

by Pete Abilla April 27, 2007

I resigned from my previous position with Ancestry.com; after considering 3 offers, I accepted a position with eBay.  Our family will still be in Utah (eBay has a large office here), but I’ll most likely travel to other offices also.  I’m very, very excited to be at eBay.  From a high level, I’ll be leading [...]

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Complexity: Different Ways, Same Output, or is It?

by Pete Abilla April 7, 2007

There are outputs and the processes that produce those outputs.  In a business, if there are many processes that produce the same output — that can be a silent killer for a business. Consider an inventory management system, where associates on the factory floor are to use a scanner-based tool to adjust physical inventory in [...]

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Multi-Tasking Leads to Lower Productivity

by Pete Abilla April 2, 2007
This entry is part 16 of 28 in the series queueing theory

There is a predisposition for firms and people to think that multi-tasking is heroic, leads to more productive employees and, is generally, becoming more and more the accepted norm in business. All of this would be nice, except that multi-tasking actually leads to lower productivity and lower morale. To belabor my point, here is a [...]

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YouTube’s Queueing Properties

by Pete Abilla March 1, 2007
This entry is part 12 of 28 in the series queueing theory

YouTube has many intriguing queueing properties.  This article will primarily look at the mpeg-to-swf conversion and study out the queueing properties of that process. I’ll show the basic process of how to upload a video on Youtube, explain the Queueing mechanics that goes on behind-the-scenes, propose a few books in case you’re interested in Queueing [...]

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Toyota Factory in Ontario, Canada

by Pete Abilla January 28, 2007

The guys at Gemba Research pointed me to this great video on the Toyota factory in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. This is the opening of the Toyota Ontario Canada plant. “We don’t lay people off. There hasn’t been a layoff worldwide since 1950.” What is the Toyota culture? One of the senior managers interviews says: “We [...]

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Comment on Qwest Customer Service

by Pete Abilla January 22, 2007

My internet connection broke this weekend.  I called customer service and was connected to a customer service representative in the Philippines.  He was very nice, cordial, and really wanted to help.  But, a few things were broken in the communication: It is fine to source offshore services to places like the Philippines, India, and elsewhere.  [...]

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Toyota Motor Corporation: Company History

by Pete Abilla January 5, 2007

Since some of your are familiar, practitioners, or die-hard fans of the Toyota Production System, I thought this history would be a nice reminder of how the company came to be the leader that it is. The data is from 2001 — so it’s a outdated, but it provides a decent history on the company. [...]

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