We give a short overview of a prototype version of a fully distributed calendar and appointment system implemented on a network of workstations. We describe the software architecture, the appointment scheduling strategies and heuristics, the distributed implementation language, and the graphical user interface. The motivations for the realization of the system within a distributed systems resea...

In today’s competitive service industry, the technology in service systems is used in a wide range of areas. The service companies are now providing service via internet or via other computer based systems in an increasing trend day by day. Expert systems are good examples of these applications. Today, expert systems are used in various fields such as design, planning, imaging, diagnosis, etc. ...

This paper considers the effectiveness of a truck appointment system in improving the yard efficiency of the container terminal. This research uses truck appointment information to improve the import container retrieval operation and reduce container rehandles by adopting an advanced container location assignment algorithm. By reducing the container rehandles, the terminal could improve yard cr...

In the eHealth system, the appointment scheduling is an important task for the delivery of healthcare service among different healthcare actors. The key procedure is to do the decision making on the selection of suitable appointments between the care providers and the care receivers. The appointment decision is a sophisticated problem in terms of how to efficiently deal with various parameters ...

We propose a concurrent programming model called threading-by-appointment (TAP). Unlike traditional threads, TAP threads can only communicate with system components or other threads by appointment. For example, a TAP thread cannot simply try to access some shared resource. Instead, a TAP thread must make an appointment with the shared resource in advance. Only at the time of the appointment, th...

BACKGROUND The issue of missed appointments in primary care is important for patients and staff. Little is known about how missed appointments, and the people who miss them, are managed in primary care, or about effective strategies for managing missed appointments. AIMS To understand the perceptions of primary care staff as to why patients miss appointments, to determine how these perception...

Computerised appointment system. Computerised appointment systems offer great flexibility in making and checking appointments but have to be extremely well written to be more usable than the traditional appointment book at the reception desk. One strength of the book is that it readily allows the receptionist an overview of activity in the practice, whereas computerised systems often show just ...