Operational impact on the environment: Managing service systems with environmental deterioration

To show how the environment affects the operation, we characterize the monotonicity of optimal decisions w.r.t. the environmental quality. To investigate operational impact on the environment, we present a complete characterization of the steady-state environmental quality, and prove the global convergence of the environmental quality in the long run. The convergence result implies that the environment may gradually degrade over time. A case study is presented to show what can be done to control the degradation. An interesting finding is that the steady-state environmental quality may improve even if the average amount of wastes produced per customer increases.