| Summary: | The work presented in this thesis is a component of a larger project that is currently under
way at the Center for Operations Excellence. This project was initiated in May of 1999.
The main goal of this project is to help Telus reduce their yearly investments in the nontoll
network by optimizing the current use of their telephone network. We chose to
accomplish this by determining a new set of routing rules that would make the most
efficient use of their current network. Three main approaches were selected to obtain this
new set of routing rules. The first one was the development of a simulation that could
serve as a test-bed to compare different sets of routing rules and to determine the optimal
set. The second approach was the use of a linear program that would generate routing
rules that minimize network utilization. Finally, we have approached the challenge of
optimizing the network utilization by using multivariate analysis to help develop routing
rules for time of day routing. This last approach is described in this thesis.
The objective of this thesis was to develop a methodology, using multivariate analysis,
that would help us find if there were possible alternate routes that could be added to the
current ones, which would take advantage of excess capacity in certain regions in the
network.
This methodology was developed in SAS and included the use of Principal Components
Analysis, Clustering Analysis and the development of an algorithm that would search for
adjacent arcs that had sufficient available capacity to serve as alternate routes during
certain periods of the day.
It was found that there are alternate routes that can be used during certain times of the
day and that these routes can be found by using the methodology described in this thesis.
This result is of great value to telephone companies as this means that there is a way for
them to use existing capacity more efficiently and therefore avoid or delay investments
into adding capacity to the telephone network.
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