Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Services Technology and Management

 

Special Issue on: “The Use of Analytical Tools for Service Management”

Guest Editor: Dr. Hokey Min, Bowling Green State University, USA

As the service industry and service components of product bundling continue to grow and become more complex, today’s managers are faced with the challenge of developing more sophisticated yet cost-efficient ways to serve their customers. That is to say, many of today’s managers are seeking ways to improve the utilisation of company resources, while fostering and creating innovative services. Such a paradigm shift in service management often requires an increased use of analytical tools such as operations research techniques, queuing models, simulation, data mining, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), data envelopment analysis (DEA), and geographic information systems (GIS).

This special issue aims to bring together the recent advances in analytical tools and their innovative application to various aspects of service management such as hospital staff scheduling, emergency vehicle deployment, retail outlet location, restaurant service quality management, hotel service benchmarking, customer profiling, service outsourcing, and call center monitoring. Papers centred on building theory or based on actual case studies will be especially welcomed. Also, papers that synthesise the past development of analytical tools for service management and provide future research directions are strongly encouraged.

Subject Coverage
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Novel methodology for value-enhancing services
• Service benchmarking using an analytical hierarchy process, data envelopment analysis, and/or balanced score card approach
• Queuing models for customer waiting lines at the service station
• Simulation imitating service deliveries
• Improvement in call center operations
• The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) for medical supply management
• POS (point-of-sale systems) for mass-merchant checkout systems
• Geographic information systems for retail outlet locations or fire station locations
• Artificial intelligence or expert systems in service management
• Data mining for customer profiling
• New mathematical models and algorithms for emergency vehicle deployment
• Service in-housing versus outsourcing decisions
• Scheduling of service employees such as nurses, hotel clerks, and postal workers
• Scheduling newspaper delivery services
• Scheduling parcel delivery services
• Scheduling airline services including airplane crews
• Maintaining vending machines

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Important Dates

Full paper due: 28 February, 2007

Notification of acceptance: 30 April, 2007

Final version of the paper due: 31 May, 2007