Analyzing Business Data with Excel

Chapter 7. Queuing

Work is frequently done in queues. Processes that were once based on paper are now handled as images with every step recorded. The flow of work from step to step is controlled by systems that establish priority and direct work to the appropriate area. Queuing applications accumulate large amounts of data that can be used to answer important questions about the operation.

This chapter is about organizing information. There aren’t many calculations. This is not a statistical or forecasting problem. The challenge is extracting the important information and presenting it. We start with several thousand rows of data and a specific area of interest. Each row in the data contains information about an item in a work queue. The area of interest is the performance of the agents doing the work.

Our task is to build an application showing how the individual agents are performing. The emphasis is on extracting the right pieces of information and presenting them in a way that is easy to use and understand.

The application uses the Excel functions listed in Table 7-1.

Table 7-1. Excel functions used in this chapter’s application

INDEX( ) INDIRECT( ) ADDRESS( ) MATCH( ) ROW( )

MAX( ) MIN( ) SUM( ) IF( ) AVERAGE( )

ISERROR( ) LOOKUP( ) COUNTIF( ) HOUR( ) VALUE( ) INT( )

The INDEX, INDIRECT, and ADDRESS functions are vital to understanding the application, and they are explained in Chapter 1.

Table 7-2 lists the Excel features used in the application.

Table 7-2. The Excel features ...