UNIT - III

Queuing Theory
INTRODUCTION :
A flow of customers from finite/infinite population towards the service facility forms a
queue (waiting line), on account of a lack of capability to serve them all at a time. In the
absence of a perfect balance between the service facilities and the customers, waiting time is
required either for the service facilities or for the Customer’s arrival.
The arriving unit that requires some services to be performed is called customer. The
customer may be persons, machines, vehicles, etc. Queue (waiting line) stands for the number
of Customers waiting to be serviced. This does not include the customers being serviced. The
process or system that provides services to the customers is termed as service channel or
service facility.
QUEUING SYSTEM:
A queuing system can be completely described by:
i. The input (arrival pattern)
ii. The service mechanism (service pattern)
iii. The queue discipline
iv. Customer 's behavior
The Input (Arrival Pattern):
Input describes the way in which the customers arrive and join the system. Generally,
customers arrive in a more or less random fashion, which is not possible to predict. Thus, the
arrival pattern can be described in terms of probabilities, and consequently, the probability
distribution for inter-arrival times (the time between two successive arrivals) must be defined.
We deal with those queuing systems in which the customers arrive in Poisson fashion. The
mean arrival rate is denoted by  .
The Service Mechanism:
This means, the arrangement of service facility to serve customers. If there is an infinite
number of servers then all the customers are served instantaneously on arrival, and there will
be no queue.
If the number of servers is finite then the customers are served according to a specific
order, Service time as a constant or random variable. Distribution of service time that is
important n practice is the negative exponential distribution. The mean service rate is denoted
by m .
The Queue Discipline:
It is a rule according to which the customers are selected for service when a queue has
been formed. The most common disciplines are:
 First come first served (FCFS)
 First in first out (FIFO)
 Last in first out (LIFO)
 Selection for service in random order (SIRO).
There are various other disciplines according to which a customer is served in
preference over the others. Under priority discipline, the service is of two types, namely pre
emptive and non-pre emptive. in pre-emptive system, the high priority customers are given
service over the low priority customers, in non-pre-emptive system, a customer of low priority
is serviced before a customer of high priority. In the case of parallel channels "fastest server
rule' is adopted.
Customer's Behavior:
The customers generally behave in the following four ways:
 Balking : A customer who leaves the queue because the queue is too long and he has no
time to wait or does not have sufficient waiting space.
 Reneging : This occurs when a waiting customer leaves the queue due to impatience.
 Priorities : In certain applications some customers are served before others, regardless
of the arrival. These customers have priority over others.
 Jockeying : Customers may jockey from one waiting line to another. This is most
common in a Super market.
Transient and steady states : A system is said to be in a transient state, when its operating
characteristics are dependent on time.
A steady state system is the one in which the behavior of the system is independent of
time. Let Pn t  denote the probability that there are ‘ n ’ customers in the system, at time t .

Then in steady state,

lim pn t   pn Independent of t 
t 
 dp n t  dp n

dt dt
lim pn t   0
t 

Traffic Intensity (or utilization factor) :

An important measure of a sample queue is its traffic intensity given by
Mean arrival rate 
Traffic intensity p  
Mean service rate 
KENDALL's NOTATION FOR REPRESENTING QUEUEING MODELS:
Generally queuing model may be completely specified in the following symbol form
a / b / c  : d / e where.
a =Probability law for the arrival (inter-arrival) time
b =Probability law according to which the customers are being served
c = Number of channels (or service stations)
d = Capacity of the system, i.e., the maximum number allowed in the system (in service and
waiting)
e =Queue discipline
CLASSIFICATION OF QUEUING MODELS
The queuing models are classified as follows:
Model I: M / M / 1 :  / FCFS  : This denotes Poisson arrival (exponential inter-arrival),

Poisson departure (exponential service time), Single server, Infinite capacity and First come first
served service discipline. The letter M is used due to Markovian property of exponential
process.
Model II: M / M / 1 : N / FCFS  : In this model, the capacity of the system is limited (finite),
say N . Obviously, the number of arrivals will not exceed the number N in any case.
Model III: Multiservice Model M / M / S  :  / FCFS  : This model takes the number of service
channels as S .
Model IV: M / M / S  : N / FCFS  : This model is essentially the same as model II, except the

maximum number of customers in the system is limited to N , where, N  S 

Measures of Model I :
1. Expected (Average ) number of units in the system L S

LS   n Pn
n 1

n

  
  n   1  
i 1   
n 1
        
 1      n  
      i 1   

       
2 3
  
 1     1  2    3   4   .......
          

2
      
 1     1  
      
1
  
 1    
  

  
  ,   1
 1-  
1


LS 
1- 

     1         2 2
2. Expected Queue length Lq  LS      
 1  1  1  1 
 
3. Expected waiting line in the Queue Wq  
     1  
4. Expected waiting line in the system
1  1     1
W S  Wq      
                   
5. Expected waiting time of a customer who has to wait W / W  0

W /W  0 
1

1
    1   

6. Expected length of non empty queue L / L  0  
1

  1   
 
7. Traffic intensity  

Problem 1 : A T.V mechanic finds that the time spent on his jobs has an exponential distribution with
mean 30 minutes, if he repairs sets in the order in which they come in. If the arrival of set is
approximately Poisson with an average rate of 10 per eight hour day, what is the mechanic’s expected
idle time each day ? How many jobs are ahead of the average set just brought in ?
1 10 1
Solution : Given ,   ,  
30 8  60 48
Expected number of jobs are,
 1 1
1
  48 1 240 5 2
LS     48  48     1 jobs
   1 1 85 3 48 3 3 3
1 
 30 48 240 240


Since the fraction of the time the mechanic is busy equals to , the number of hours for which


 30
the repairman remains busy in an eight – hour day = 8   8   5 hours
 48
 The time for which the mechanic remains idle in eight hour day = 8-5= 3 hours
Problem 2 : 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 a phone call is assumed to be
distributed exponentially with mean three minutes.
(i) What is the probability that a person arriving at the booth will have to wait?
(ii) What is the average length of the queue that forms from time to time?
(iii) The telephone department will install a second booth when convinced that an arrival
would have to wait at least three minutes for the phone. By how much time must the
flow of arrivals be increased in order to Justify a second booth?
1 1
Solution : Given   
10 3
 1 3 3
(i) Probability w  0  1  P0      0.3
 10 1 10
1

(ii) L / L  0   3  1.43 persons
  1 1

3 10
 
(iii) Wq 
    
1
Since, W q  3 ,       for second booth
3
  3  1
3  1  1  3   1  3   6   1    
11  1  3  1  3  6
   
33  3

1 1 53 2
Hence, increase in the arrival rate=     0.0667 arrival per minute.
6 10 30 30
Problem 3 : Customers arrive at a one- window drive-in back according to Poisson distribution
with mean 10 per hour. Service time per customer is exponential with mean five minutes. The
space in front of the window including that for the serviced car an accommodate a maximum of
three cars. Others can wait outside this space.
(i) What is the probability that an arriving customer can drive directly to the space in front
of the window ?
(ii) What is the probability that an arriving customer will have to wait outside the indicated
space?
(iii) How long is an arriving customer expected to wait before starting service?
Solution : Given ,   10 per hour
1
   60  12 per hour
5
 10
 
 12
(i) The probability that an arriving customer can drive directly to the space in front of
the window,

 
2
  
2

P0  P1  P2  P0  P0    P0  P0 1     
     
 

       
2

 1   1      P0  1 
        

 10  10 100 
 1  1     0.42
 12  12 144 
(ii) Probability that an arriving customer will have to wait outside the indicated space
 S  1  0.42  0.58
(iii) Average waiting time of a customer in a queue
 1 10  1  5
=     0.4167 hours
     12  12  10  12
Problem 4 : In a Supermarket, the average arrival rate of customers is 10 every 30 minutes
following Poissson process. The average time taken by a cashier to list and calculate the
customers purchase is two and a half minute, following exponential distribution. What is the
probability that the queue length exceeds 6? What is the expected time spent by a customer in
the system?
Solution :
10
 per minute
30
1
 per minute
2.5
1

   3  0.8333
 1
2.5
(i) Probability of queue size more than six is  6

 0.8333   0.3348
1
Expected waiting time WS 
6

 

LS 1  0.8333
(ii) WS     3  14.96 minutes.
  1  0.8333
Problem 5 : Indian Railway marshalling Yard, goods trains arrive at a rate of 30 trains per day.
Assuming that inter arrival time and service time distribution follows an exponential
distribution with an average of 30 minutes, calculate the following
(i) The mean queue size
(ii) The probability that queue size exceeds 10
(iii) If the input of the train increases to an average of 33 per day. what will be the
changes in (i) and (ii).
Solution :
30 1
Given,    trains / minute
60  24 48
 1
 trains / minute
30
 30 5
  
 48 8
5
 8 5
(i) LS     1.6667 trains  2 Trains (approximately)
1  5 3
1
8
Probabilit y that queue size exceeds 10 is  0.75   0.056
10
(ii)
33 11 1
(iii) We have ,     trains /minute
60  24 480 30
  11
LS  where,   
1   16
11
11
LS  16   2.2. trains
11 5
1
16
10
 11 
Also, Probability that queue size exceeds10 is   10
    0.1460
 16 
Problem 6 : At what average rate must a clerk at a supermarket work, in order to insure a
probability of 0.90 that the customers will not have to wait longer than 12 minutes? It is
assumed that there is only one counter, to which customers arrive in a Poisson fashion at an
average rate of 15 per hour. The length of service by the clerk has an exponential distribution.
15 1
Solution : Here    customer per minute
60 4
Probability of waiting time  12 is =1-0.9=0.10

Pwaiting time more than ' t '    1   e   w dw
t


 
   1  e   w dw  0.1
12 


 
  1    e   w dw  0.1
  12
     w 
   e 
  1      0.1
         12
 
 e      w 
       0.1
      12

 e      w 
       0.1
     12


 e      w 

12  0.1

 e     e   12  0.1

 0  e   12  0.1
 e 12  12  0.1
1
12  12
 e 4
 0.1
 e 312   0.1