A process flow map for a call center is provided below. Here?show this process works. Customers with questions about thiscompany?s products call an 800 number. During a typical 8-hour dayshift, the time between calls can be approximated by an exponentialdistribution with a mean of 4 minutes. The call center has 10 phonelines and hence can handle up to 10 calls at once. If a callarrives and all 10 lines are in use, then the caller gets a busysignal and has to call back later. If a call arrives and fewer than10 lines are in use, then the call goes directly to a customerservice (CS) person, if one is available, and otherwise is put onhold. The amount of time for a CS person to handle a call, onceanswered, can be approximated by a normal distribution, with a meanof 10 minutes and a standard deviation of 2 minutes.Note: Because there are only 10 phone lines, the number of CSpeople plus the capacity of Linemust be 10.

Exercise 3: Management wants to determine how many CS people touse during the day shift so that two things are both true: the meannumber of minutes a person waits is less than 2 minutes and theservice level is at least .99. Consider using from one to five CSpeople. For each possibility, run 50 simulations of an 8-hour dayshift and record the mean cycle time through Line. Assume that theinitial number of callers on hold at the beginning of the day shiftcan be approximated by a normal distribution with a mean of 2 and astandard deviation of .5 (SimQuick will round to the nearestinteger). How many CS people would you recommend for the dayshift?

Process Flow Map for Call Center Entrance Arrivals Buffer Line Work Station CS Person 1 Work Station CS Person 2 Work Station CS Person 3 Buffer Served Customers