Got our case study grades back today. 95%. That’s fine with me. Waiting in lines is the subject today.People don’t like waiting in lines. There are aggravating factors that make waiting worse:
- Uncertain wait time
- Solitary waiting
- Unexpected waiting
- Waiting for low-importance things
- Externally imposed waiting — people will wait patiently if they show up early, but the same amount of waiting is irritating if the person they’re meeting is late
Queuing theory is a widely used quantitative analysis technique. It has to do with:
- Determining the best level of service for an organization
- Analyzing the trade-off between cost of providing service and cost of waiting time
- Finding the cost-minimizing service level.
Queuing systems have various characteristics.
Arrival Characteristics:
- Size of calling population
- Unlimited (infinite)
- Limited
- Pattern of Arrivals
- Random
- Poisson Distribution
- Behavior of the Arrivals
- Join line
- Balk (refuse to join)
- Renege (leave after joining)
Waiting Line Characteristics
- Length of Queue
- Limited
- Unlimited
- Service Priority/Queue Discipline
- FIFO?
- Other
Service Facility Characteristics
- Number of channels or servers
- Single
- Multiple
- Number of phases in service
- Single, 1 stop
- Multiple stops
- Service time distribution
- Negative exponential
- Other