QUEUEING THEORY

Model I: Single server with infinite capacity

1. A self service store employs one cashier at its counter. 8 customers arrive on an average every 5
minutes while the cashier can serve 10 customers in the same time. Assuming Poisson
distribution for arrival and exponential distribution for service rate, determine (i) average
number of customers in the system (ii) average number of customers in queue (iii) average time
a customer spends in the system (iv) average time a customer waits before being served.
2. A TV repairman finds that the time spend on his job has an exponential distribution with mean
30 minutes. If he repair sets in the order in which they came in and if the arrival of sets is
approximately Poisson with an average rate of 10 per 8 hr day, what is the repairman’s expected
idle time each day? How many jobs are ahead of average set just brought?
3. In a railway marshalling yard goods trains arrive at a rate of 30 trains per day. Assuming that the
inter-arrival time follows exponential distribution and the service time is exponential with an
average of 36 minutes. Find (i) expected queue size (ii) Probability that the queue size exceeds
10 (iii) If the input of trains increases to an average of 33 per day, what will be the change in (i)
and (ii).
4. Arrivals at a telephone booth are considered to be Poisson with an average time of 10 minutes
between one arrival and the next. The length of phone call is assumed to be exponentially with
mean 3 minutes. (i) What is the probability that a person arriving the booth will have to wait? (ii)
The telephone department will install a second booth when convinced that an arrival would
expect waiting for at least 3 minutes for a phone call. By how much should the flow of arrivals
increase in order to justify a second booth? (iii) What is the average length of the queue that
forms from time to time? (iv) What is the probability that it will take him more than 10 minutes
altogether to wait for the phone and complete his call?
5. A road transport company has one reservation clerk on duty at a time. He handles information
of bus schedules and makes reservations. Customers arrive at a rate of 8 per hour. (i) What is
the average number of customers waiting for service? (ii) What is the average time a customer
has to wait before getting service? (iii) The management is planning to install a computer system
to handle information and reservations. This is expected to reduce the service time from 5 to 3
minutes. The additional cost of having the new system works out to Rs.50 per day. If the cost of
goodwill of having to wait is estimated to be 12 paise per minute spent waiting before being
served. Should the company install the computer system?
6. A bank has only one typist. Since the typing work varies in length, the typing rate is randomly
distributed by a PD with mean service rate of 8 letters per hour. The letters arrive at a rate of 5
per hr during the entire 8 hr work duty. If the type writer is valued at Rs.1.50 per hr. Determine
(i) Equipment utilization (ii) the percentage time that an arriving letter has to wait (iii) Average
system time (iv) Average cost due to waiting on the part of the typewriter.
7. A Xerox machine in an office is operated by a person who does other jobs also. The average
service time for a job is 6 minutes per customer. On an average, every 12 minutes are customers
arrive for Xeroxing. Find (i) the Xerox machine utilization (ii) percentage of time that an arrival
has not to wait (iii) Ls (iv) Lq (v) the arrival rate, if the management is willing to deploy the
person exclusively for Xeroxing when the average time spent by a customer exceeds 15 minutes.
8. On an average 96 patients per 24 hour day require the service of an emergency clinic and a
patient requires 10 minutes of active attention. Suppose that it costs the clinic Rs.100 per
patient treated to obtain an average servicing time of 10 minutes, and that each minute of
decrease in this average time would cost Rs.10 per patient treated. How much would have to be
 budgeted by the clinic to decrease the average size of the queue from one and one-third
patients to half a patient.

Model II: Single server with finite capacity

9. Consider a single server queueing system with Poisson input, exponential service times. Suppose
the mean arrival rate is 3 calling units per hour, the expected service time is 0.25 hrs and the
maximum permissible number calling units in the system is two. Find the steady state
probability distribution of the number of calling units in the system and the expected number of
calling units in the system.
10. Assume that the goods trains are coming in a yard at the rate of 30 trains per day and suppose
that the inter-arrival time follows an exponential distribution. The service time for each train is
assumed to be exponential with an average of 36 minutes. If the yard can admit 9 trains at a
time(there being 10 lines, one of which is reserved for shunting purpose), calculate the
probability that the yard is empty and the average queue length.
11. Patients arrive at a clinic according to Poisson distribution at a rate of 30 patients per hour. The
waiting room does not accommodate more than 14 patients. Examination time per patient is
exponential with mean rate of 20 per hour. (i) Find the effective arrival rate. (ii) What is the
probability that an arriving patient will not wait? (iii) What is the expected waiting time until a
patient is discharged from the clinic?

Model III: Multi server with infinite capacity

12. A bank has two tellers on savings accounts. The first teller handles withdrawals only. The second
teller handles deposits only. It has been found that the service time distributions of both
withdrawals and deposits are exponential with mean service time of 3 minutes per customer.
Depositors and withdrawers are found to arrive in Poisson fashion throught the day with mean
arrival rate of 16 and 14 per hour. What would be the effect on the average waiting time for
depositors and withdrawers if each teller could handle both withdrawals and deposits? What
would be the effect if this could only be accomplished by increasing the service time to 3.5
minutes?
13. A library wants to improve the service facilities in terms of the waiting time of its borrowers. The
library has two counters at present and the borrowers arrive at the rate of 1 every 6 minutes
and the service time is 10 minutes on an average. Find the number of additional counters to be
provided if the arrival rate is expected to be twice the present value and average waiting time of
the borrower must be limited to half the present value.
14. A general insurance company has three claim adjusters in its branch office. People with claims
against the company are found to arrive in Poisson fashion, at an average rate of 20 per 8-hour
day. The amount of time that an adjuster spends with a claimant is 40 minutes on an average. (i)
How many hrs per week can an adjuster expect to spend his claimants? (ii) How much time, on
an average, does a claimant spend in the branch office?
15. A petrol pump station has 4 pumps. The service time follows ED with a mean of 6 minutes and
cars arrive at rate of 30 cars per hour. (i) What is the probability that an arrival would have to
wait in line? (ii) Find Ls,Lq,Ws,Wq. (iii) For what percentage of time would a pump be idle on an
average.
16. Given an average arrival rate of 20 per hour, is it better for a customer to get service at a single
channel with mean service rate of 22 customers per hour or at one of two channels in parallel
with mean service rate of 11 customers per hour for each of two channels?
 17. A supermarket has two girls running up sales at the counters. If the service time for each
customer is exponential with mean 4 minutes and if people arrive at the rate of 10 an hour. (i)
What is the probability of having to wait for service? (ii) What is the expected percentage of idle
time for each girl? (iii) If a customer has to wait, what is the expected length of his waiting time?
18. A petroleum company is considering expansion of its unloading facility at its refinery. Ships
arrive at the rate of 5 ships per week. The service rate is 10 ships per week. (i) Find the average
time a ship must wait before beginning to deliver its cargo to the refinery. (ii) If a second berth is
rented, what will be the average number of ships waiting before being unloaded? (iii) What
would be the average time a ship would wait before being unloaded with two berths? (iv) What
is the average number of idle berths at any specified time?

Model IV: Multi server with finite capacity

19. A 2-person barber shop has 5 chairs to accommodate waiting customers. Customers arrive at
the rate of 4 per hr and spend on an average of 12 minutes in the barber’s chair. Find P 0,P1 and
P7. Find Ls,Lq,Ws,Wq.
20. A barber shop has two barbers and three chairs for customers. The customers arrive at the rate
of 5 per hr and the service time for each customer is 15 minutes. What is the probability that the
shop is empty? What is the expected number of customers in the shop?
21. At a port there are 6 unloading berths and 4 unloading crews. When all the berths are full,
arriving ships are diverted to an overflow facility 20kms down the river. Tankers arrive with a
mean of 1 every 2hr.It takes on the average, 10 hr to unload a tanker. Find (i) How many tankers
are at the port on the average? (ii) How long does a tanker spend at the port on the average?
(iii) What is the average arrival rate at the overflow facility?
22. A group of engineers has two terminals available to aid in their calculations. The average
computing job requires 20 minutes of terminal time and each engineer requires some
computation once every half an hour. If there are 6 engineers in a group, find (i) the expected no
of engineers waiting to use one of the terminals and in the computing center (ii) the total time
lost per day.

Model V: PK formula

23. A one man barber shop takes exactly 25 minutes to complete one hair cut. If customer arrive at
the barber shop in a Poisson fashion at an average rate of one every 40 minutes, how long on
the average a customer spends in the shop? Also find the average time a customer must wait for
service.
24. In a heavy machine shop, the overhead crane is 75% utilized. Time study observations gave the
average slinging time as 10.5 minutes with a standard deviation of 8.8 minutes. What is the
average calling rate of the services of the crane and what is the delay in getting service? If the
average slinging time 8 minutes with SD of 6.0 minutes, how much reduction will occur on
average in the delay of getting served?
25. A patient goes to a single doctor clinic for a general check up has to go through 4 phases. The
doctor takes on the average 4 minutes for reach phase of the check up and the time taken for
each phase is Gamma or Erlang distributed. If the arrivals of the patients at the clinic are
approximately poisson at the average rate of 3 per hour, what is the average time spent by a
patient in the examination and the average time spent by a patient waiting in the clinic?.
26. A car wash facility operates with only one bay. Cars arrive according to a poisson distribution
with a mean of 4 cars per hour and may wait in the factory’s parking lot if the bay is busy. The
 parking lot is large enough to accommodate any number of cars. If the service time for a car has
uniform distribution between 8 and 12 minutes,
find i) the average number of cars waiting in the parking lot. And
ii) the average waiting time of a car in the parking lot.
27. Automatic car wash facility operators with only one bay. Cars arrive according to a poisson
distribution with a mean of 4 cars per hour and may wait in the factory’s parking lot if the bay is
busy. If the service time follows normal distribution with mean 12 minutes and S.D. 3 minutes,
find the average number of cars waiting in the parking lot. Also find the mean waiting time of
cars in the parking lot.