In a talk titled, "Service Engineering: Data-Based Science in Support of Service Management, or Empirical Adventures in Call Centers and Hospitals,"Avishai "Avi" Mandelbaum, professor on the William Davidson  Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, will describe examples of complex service operations (e.g., call centers, hospitals, banks and courts) for which data-based simple models have been found useful. Dr. Mandelbaum refers to this as "Simple Models at the Service of Complex Realities." 

The mathematical framework for his models is asymptotic queueing theory, where limits are taken as the number of servers increases indefinitely, in ways that maintain a sought-after (often delicate) balance between staffing level and offered-load. A specific such balance reveals an operational regime that achieves, under already moderate scale, remarkably high levels of both service quality and efficiency.

Dr. Mandelbaum's teaching has been acknowledged by the Technion Mani Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1999; the Technion Excellence in Teaching Award, 2000 (for the course, Service Engineering); and the inaugural Meir Rosenblatt Prize for teaching, 2004.  His research contributions have been acknowledged by the ORSIS Yosef Levy prize, 2001; the Mitchner Prize for Quality Sciences and Quality Management, 2003; and the inaugural Markov Lecture of the Applied Probability Society , INFORM, 2005.

Click here for more information about Dr. Mandelbaum and the upcoming lecture.