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