Queues with switchover-A review and critique

In many importnat applications, a situation is encountered where the service capacity of a server must be switched between various competing classes of customers. In most situations, this switchover is not costless. A penalty must be paid either in terms of lost service capacity during the switching period or in terms of a cost to carry out the switching or both. Although queues with switchover abound in applications, generally applicable results are not widely available. In this paper, the authors review and analyze optimal control policies for queues with switchover. They point out that ideas from several diverse areas can be applied to these models.