Fair Scheduling of Heterogeneous Customer Populations

Abstract

When managing congested service systems, it is common to use priority rules based on some operational criteria. In this paper, we consider the societal implications of such individual-focused priority policies, when individuals are considered as members of broader population groups. We find that optimal resource allocation policies such as the cμ-rule in scheduling can lead to significant inequity across different population groups. We propose policies that can mitigate this inequity and can even generate completely equitable outcomes across populations with little, or at times, even no additional system cost. Thus, we find that it can be possible to achieve more equitable outcomes while ensuring operational efficiency.

Keywords: fairness, queueing, scheduling, priority