Constant Scheduling Policy in Appointment Scheduling Systems

The constant scheduling policy is commonly adopted in appointment scheduling to manage customer arrivals. To analyze the performance of a constant scheduling policy, this paper employs a queueing model. We find that the constant scheduling policy achieves optimality when the system reduces to a deterministic one and the slot duration aligns with multiples of the service time. However, in presence of randomness, the constant scheduling policy tends to be suboptimal. To address this, we introduce bracket scheduling policies that outperform the constant scheduling policy. Furthermore, we observe that policies generally perform better with less randomness in the system. Based on our findings, we provide suggestions to system managers to promote operational efficiency.