Scheduling in services: a review and bibliometric analysis

Scheduling problems are a fundamental aspect of various industries, wherein the effective allocation of resources and time management play a crucial role in optimizing operational processes. These problems can arise in any industry that requires the scheduling of resources, from manufacturing to healthcare and transportation. Despite the extensive scope of service system scheduling problems in the literature, research has yet to examine the bibliometric variables in this area. Based on bibliometric criteria, this research offers a picture of the structure, evolution, and potential future directions of studies on scheduling in service systems. With the application of the bibliometric analysis software VOSviewer and CiteSpace, 1991 publications related to service scheduling were identified from the Web of Science database between 1982 and 2023 and used in the analysis of this paper. This review used several bibliometric approaches, such as performance analysis and a scientific mapping of service scheduling. Several bibliometric variables, such as h-index, productivity, and citations, were included in the performance evaluation. Science mapping has used co-citations, bibliographic coupling, and the concurrency of keywords. Also, this paper introduces a novel and comprehensive framework for classifying scheduling models in service systems based on their characteristics. The highly cited implementation papers in the literature have demonstrated that scheduling problems in health care have been heavily utilized in the scholarly literature. This review which is the first bibliometric analysis in the service scheduling field provides a summary reference for scholars entering the subject for future research.