How do I Schedule Appointments with Early/Late Adjustment?

Arrivals occurring at specifically scheduled times with provision for variable early and late adjustment.

Suggested Technique

1. Define a scheduled arrival in the same manner as shown in Appointment Scheduling, except that the starting time should be adjusted down by the time the number of minutes any appointed might arrive early (the offset).

2. Define the first activity for the purpose of delaying the arrival for the distribution that defines the early or late function of the arrival.

3. On the route out of the first activity (the activity that sets the early or late delay) set the CycleStart attribute to the clock.

Example: A dentist wants to model his office procedures including the appointment schedule to decrease customer waiting time. Customers are told to arrive 5 minutes early, but experience has shown that they will arrive according to a distribution added to the scheduled time minus an offset.

If a customer had an appointment for 9:00 AM then the scheduled arrival would be set to 8:55. The first activity, “Early/Late Adjustment,” has a distribution in the time field that represents the percentage of people that arrive before the five minute period is expired. The attribute CycleStart is set to the current time so effect in the model is that the person walked in the door after the Early/Late Adjustment.

TO DO: Create the Scheduled arrival connection. Click the Define Schedule button and create a schedule by entering times that are less than the real appointment by a predetermined offset. Create an activity that has the sole purpose of delaying the arrival by a early/late distribution. Enter this distribution in the time field. In the route leaving the delay activity, set the CycleStart attribute to the CLOCK() function.

You can define action logic for each scheduled arrival entry. This is done in the lower half of the Scheduled Arrivals dialog. This is mainly useful to assign specific attribute values such as patient type.

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