Fries B E, Marathe V P
Oper Res. 1981 Mar-Apr;29(2):324-45. doi: 10.1287/opre.29.2.324.
The single-block appointment system is the most common method of scheduling ambulatory care clinics today. Several studies have examined various appointment systems ranging from single-block appointments on one extreme to individual appointments on the other, and including mixtures of these such as multiple-block (m-at-a-time) and block/individual systems. In this paper we analyze a general single-server multiple-block system, one permitting blocks of variable size. In the analysis we use a dynamic programming approach, with some modifications to compensate for the non-Markov nature of the problem. Analytical results and approximations which significantly reduce the computational requirements for a solution are obtained. Examples demonstrate that under certain weightings of the criteria of waiting, idle, and overtime, the generality of the system considered here allows performance superior to that of other commonly used systems.
单时段预约系统是目前安排门诊诊所日程的最常见方法。多项研究考察了各种预约系统，一端是单时段预约，另一端是个人预约，还包括这些方式的混合形式，如多时段（一次多个）和时段/个人系统。在本文中，我们分析了一个通用的单服务器多时段系统，即允许时段大小可变的系统。在分析中，我们采用动态规划方法，并进行了一些修改以弥补问题的非马尔可夫性质。得到了显著降低求解计算要求的分析结果和近似值。示例表明，在等待、空闲和加班标准的某些权重下，这里考虑的系统的通用性使其性能优于其他常用系统。
