ABSTRACT
Working time configuration is highly complex in practice due to the fact that the organization’s operations have to be taken into account in addition to aspects of law and collective negotiations. In the services sector in particular, dynamic factors have to be taken into account that stem from the stochastic nature of arrival intervals and processing times. This results in such a wide range of possible configurations for a company’s working time system that operations planners are barely able to take them all into account without the help of suitable methods of planning and evaluation. However, there are few tools that currently offer this kind of dynamic assessment. Only personnel-based simulation offers the opportunity to carry out a dynamic and prospective evaluation, although previously only work-related stresses on employees could be modeled. This was the situation in which the OSim-GAM simulation tool was refined in order to allow prospective working time configuration that takes the work-life balance of employees into account. This paper presents the developed simulation tool using a call center as a case study.
