Managing Business

Operations
Queue Management

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Managing Business Operations
Today’s Agenda
• Understand the meaning of queue management
• Discuss the psychology of queuing
• Explore the characteristics of queuing systems

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Managing Business Operations
Queue Management

• How do we deal with queues?

• What is the trade-off between utilisation of resources (unit
cost) and waiting time (customer satisfaction)?

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Managing Business Operations
Arrival rate and service time example

• Arrival rate = every 2 minutes

• Service time = 10 minutes
• 5 servers required
• No queues and 100% resource utilization (i.e. no idle
time)
• Fewer than 5 servers → queues form
• More than 5 servers → less than 100% utilization

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Managing Business Operations
Variability in arrival rate and service time

• Is what causes queues to form – even if the numbers

of servers is adequate for the average arrival
rate/service time.
• Managers face a choice between resource utilization
and queuing time.

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Managing Business Operations
Process utilization, waiting time and variability

Average number of units

Average number of units

waiting to be processed
waiting to be processed

High utilization
but long waiting
time
Decreasing Reduction in
process X
variability variability
Short waiting
time but low
utilization

Y Z

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Utilization Utilization

(a) Decreasing variability allows higher (b) Managing process capacity

utilization without long waiting times and/or variability.

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Managing Business Operations
Psychology of queuing

A series of propositions which can be used by

service organisations to instigate policies to
influence customer satisfaction with waiting
times
• Unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.
• Pre-process waits feel longer than in-process waits.
• Anxiety makes waits seem longer.
• Uncertain waits are longer than known, finite waits.
• Unexplained waits are longer than explained waits.
• Unfair waits are longer than equitable waits.
• The more valuable the service, the longer the customer will wait.
• Solo waits feel longer than group waits.
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Managing Business Operations
Characteristics of queues

• Population of customers – limited or unlimited?

• Arrival pattern – random intervals between
arrivals. What does this mean?
- the chance of an arrival in say the next minute does
not depend on when the previous arrival occurred
• Physical or virtual queue?
• System capacity
• Queue discipline – FIFO? SIRO?
• Service pattern – average time to serve customers
• Number of channels and service points
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Managing Business Operations
Different queuing systems

server

server
server
server

server
server
server
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Managing Business Operations
Queuing theory – the process

• Customer arrives; time between successive arrivals

is variable
• Customer joins queue (unless server is free)
• Customer is served – simplest models assume a
single server. Service time is variable.
• Customer exits system

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Managing Business Operations
Parameters in Queuing theory

• Queues often characterized by:

Ø inter-arrival time
Ø processing time (service time)
Ø number of servers
Ø maximum queue length
• Probability distribution often used to describe inter-
arrival and service times.

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Managing Business Operations
Arrival rate, service rate and utilization

• ta = average (mean) time between arrivals

(equivalent to the cycle time)
• ra = arrival rate (equal to 1/ta)
• ts = average service (processing) time
• rs = service rate
• u = utilization (sometimes called traffic intensity) =
ra/rs

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Managing Business Operations
Single server with exponential inter arrival and
service times

• Average number of units in the system (L) = u/(1-u)

• Average waiting time in the system (W) = ts/(1-u)

• Average number of units in the queue (Lq) = u2/(1-u)

• Average waiting time in the queue (Wq) = [u/(1-u)].ts

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Managing Business Operations
Example

The manager of an office is confused as to why large queues seem

to build up at the enquiry desk. It is known that customers arrive at
a rate of around 10 per hour and that any trained member of staff
can process them at a rate of 12 per hour.

• arrival rate (ra) = 10 per hour

• So average time between arrivals (ta) = 1/10 hours or 6 minutes

• average service time (ts) = 5 minutes

• service rate (rs) = 12 per hour

• Utilization (u) = ra/rs = 10/12 = 0.83

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Managing Business Operations
Queue characteristics

• Average number of units in the system (L) = u/(1-u)

= 0.83/(1-0.83) = 5 customers

• Average waiting time in the system (W) = ts/(1-u)

= 5/(1-0.83) = 30 minutes

• Average number of units in the queue (Lq) = u2/(1-u)

= 0.832/(1-0.83) = 4.2 customers

• Average waiting time in the queue (Wq) = [u/(1-u)].ts

= [0.83/(1-0.83)]x5 = 25 minutes
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Managing Business Operations
Lessons learned

• Variability leads to queues

• Trade-off between utilization and waiting time is NOT
linear
• The closer the system is to capacity, the larger is the
effect of any slight increase in arrival rate (or
decrease in the service rate) on the length of the
queue.

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Managing Business Operations
Process utilization, waiting time and
variability

Average number of units

Average number of units

waiting to be processed
waiting to be processed

High utilization
but long waiting
time
Decreasing Reduction in
process X
variability variability
Short waiting
time but low
utilization

Y Z

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Utilization Utilization

(a) Decreasing variability allows higher (b) Managing process capacity

utilization without long waiting times and/or variability.

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Managing Business Operations
Analysis of queues and waiting time

• Some systems can be analysed through QUEUING

THEORY
• More complex systems often analysed using
SIMULATION MODELLING

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Managing Business Operations
Queuing system

Distribution of Distribution of
arrival times processing times Server 1

Rejecting Balking Reneging

Server 2

Source of
customers
Queue or Served
customers
‘waiting line’ Server m

Boundary
of system

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Managing Business Operations
Queuing system

Low variability –
narrow distribution
of process times

Time
High variability –
wide distribution of
process times

Time

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Managing Business Operations