The power of letting go: scheduling with immediate and delayed rejections in multi-server queues
摘要
Long waiting times in service systems reduce customer satisfaction, increase abandonment rates, and harm provider performance. To address these challenges, we study a multi-server, multi-class queueing system in which the operator can jointly control scheduling and implement two types of rejections: immediate rejections at arrival and delayed rejections during the waiting period. The objective is to minimize total operational costs, including waiting costs and rejection penalties. Using a fluid approximation, we characterize the structure of the optimal policy and develop an index-based control rule—the