What is queue?

 Examine situations that generate queuing

problems.
 Introduce the various objectives that may be set
for the operation of a waiting line.
 Examine costs associated with queuing
situations.
 Introduce standard queuing language and
symbols.
 Show how to solve queuing problems.
 Demonstrate a simulation solution for a queuing
problem.
 Reduce waiting time
 Improvement of service
l
Service cost Waiting
cost
Three Rivers runs a huge docking facility located on the
Ohio River near Pittsburgh. Approximately five ships
arrive to unload their cargoes of steel and ore during
every 12-hour work shift. Each hour that a ship sits
idle in line waiting to be unloaded costs the firm a
great deal of money, about $1000 per hour. From
experience, management estimates that if one team
of stevedores is on duty to handle the unloading
work, each ship will wait an average of 7 hours to be
unloaded. If two teams are working, the average
waiting time drops to 4 hours; for three teams, it’s 3
hours; and for four teams, 2 hours. But each
additional team of stevedores is also an expensive
proposition, due to union contracts.

Three River’s superintendent would like to determine

the optimal number of teams of stevedores to have
on duty each shift. The objective is to minimize total
expected costs.
*Stevedores team salaries are computed as the
number of people in a typical team (assumed
to be 50), times number of hours each person
works per day (12 hours), times an hourly
salary of $10 per hour. If two teams are
employed, the rate is just doubled.
 1 2 3 4
Average # of ships arriving 5 5 5 5
per shift
Average time each ship waits 7 4 3 2
to be unloaded (hours)
Total ship hours lost per shift 35 20 15 10
(a x b)
Estimated cost per hour of $1000 $1000 $1000 $1000
idle ship time
Value of ship’s lost time or $35000 $20000 $15000 $10000
waiting cost (c x d)
Stevedore team salary or $6000 $12000 $18000 $24000
service cost *
Total expected cost (e + f) $41000 $32000 $33000 $34000
 In this section, we take a look at the three parts of
a waiting-line, or queuing, system
1. Arrivals or inputs to the system. These have
characteristics such as population size, behavior,
and a statistical distribution.
2. Queue discipline, or the waiting line itself.
Characteristics of the queue include whether it is
limited or unlimited in length and the discipline of
people or items in it.
3. The service facility. Its characteristics include its
design and the statistical distribution of service
times.
We now examine each of these three parts.
ARRIVAL CHARACTERISTICS
The input source that generates arrivals
or customers for a service system has
three major
characteristics:
1. Size of the arrival population.
2. Behavior of arrivals.
3. Pattern of arrivals (statistical
distribution).
 Size of the Arrival (Source) Population.
Population sizes are considered either
unlimited (essentially infinite) or limited
(finite). When the number of customers or
arrivals on hand at any given moment is just
a small portion of all potential arrivals, the
arrival population is considered unlimited, or
infinite.

Queuing models assume such an infinite

arrival population.
Pattern of Arrivals at the System
Customers arrive at a service facility either
according to some known schedule (for example,
one patient every 15 minutes or one student every
half hour) or else they arrive randomly. Arrivals are
considered random when they are independent of
one another and their occurrence cannot be
predicted exactly.

Frequently in queuing problems, the number

of arrivals per unit of time can be estimated by a
probability distribution known as the Poisson
distribution. For any given arrival time (such as 2
customers per hour or 4 trucks per minute), a
discrete Poisson distribution can be established by
using the formula.
 P(x)= probability of x arrivals
 x = number of arrivals per unit of
time
 λ = average arrival rate
 e = 2.7183 (which is the base of
the natural logarithms)
 With the help of the table, which gives the value
of eλ for use in the Poisson distribution, these
values are easy to compute. Figure D.2 illustrates
the Poisson distribution for λ =2 and λ = 4. This
means that if the average arrival rate is λ = 2
customers per hour, the probability of 0
customers arriving in any random hour is about
13%, probability of 1 customer is about 27%, 2
customers about 27%, 3 customers about 18%, 4
customers about 9%, and so on. The chances that
9 or more will arrive are virtually nil(0). Arrivals,
of course, are not always Poisson distributed they
may follow some other distribution). Patterns,
therefore, should be examined to make certain
that they are well approximated by Poisson
before that distribution is applied
Behavior of Arrivals

Most queuing models assume that an arriving

customer is a patient customer. Patient customers
are people or machines that wait in the queue until
they are served and do not switch between lines.
Unfortunately, life is complicated by the fact that
people have been known to balk or to renege.
Customers who balk refuse to join the waiting line
because it is too long to suit their needs or
interests. Reneging customers are those who enter
the queue but then become impatient and leave
without completing their transaction. Actually, both
of these situations just serve to highlight the need
for queuing theory and waiting-line analysis.
 Waiting-Line Characteristics
- The waiting line itself is the second
component of a queuing system. The length
of a line can be either limited or unlimited. A
queue is limited when it cannot, either by law
or because of physical restrictions, increase to
an infinite length. A small barbershop, for
example, will have only a limited number of
waiting chairs. Queuing models are treated in
this module under an assumption of unlimited
queue length. A queue is unlimited when its
size is unrestricted, as in the case of the toll
booth serving arriving automobiles.
A second waiting-line
characteristic deals with queue
discipline.
 This refers to the rule by which
customers in the line are to
receive service. Most systems use
a queue discipline known as the
first-in, first-out (FIFO) rule.
 Service Characteristics
The third part of any queuing
system are the service
characteristics. Two basic properties
are important:

(1) design of the service system and

(2) the distribution of service times.

 Basic Queuing System Designs
Service systems are usually classified in terms
of their number of channels (for example, number
of servers) and number of phases (for example,
number
of service stops that must be made).
A single-channel queuing system, with one server,
is typified by the drive-in bank with only one open
teller. If, on the other hand, the bank has several
tellers on
duty, with each customer waiting in one common
line for the first available teller, then we would
have a multiple-channel queuing system. Most
banks today are multichannel service systems, as
are most large barbershops, airline ticket counters,
and post offices.
 In a single-phase system, the customer
receives service from only one station and
then exits the
system.
 Say the restaurant requires you to place your
order at one station, pay at a second, and
pick up your food at a third. In this case, it is
a multiphase system. Likewise, if the driver’s
license agency is large or busy, you will
probably have to wait in one line to complete
your application (the first service stop), queue
again to have your test graded, and finally go
to a third counter to pay your fee.
Service Time Distribution
Service patterns are like arrival patterns in
that they may be either constant or random. If
service time is constant, it takes the same
amount of time to take care of each customer.
This is the case in a machine-performed
service operation such as an automatic car
wash.
More often, service times are randomly
distributed. In many cases, we can assume
that random service times are described by
the negative exponential probability
distribution.
 shows that if service times follow a
negative exponential distribution, the
probability of any very long service time
is low. For example, when an average
service time is 20 minutes (or three
customers per hour), seldom if ever will
a customer require more than 1.5 hours
in the service facility. If the mean service
time is 1 hour, the probability of
spending more than 3 hours in service is
quite low.