Waiting Line Management

Edited and Compiled By

D r. C h a n d r a s h e k h a r V. J o s h i

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 The Waiting Line Problem
A central problem in many service settings is the management of waiting time. The manager must weigh the
added cost of providing more rapid service (more traffic lanes, additional landing strips, more checkout stands)
against the inherent cost of waiting.
The Practical View of Waiting Lines
The essential point is waiting lines are not a fixed condition of a productive system but are to a very large extent
within the control of the system management and design.
Useful suggestions for managing queues based on research in the banking industry are the following:

∙ Segment the customers. If a group of customers need something that can be done very quickly, give them a special
line so they do not have to wait for the slower customers. This is commonly done at grocery stores where checkout
lines are designated for “12 items or less.”

∙ Train your servers to be friendly. Greeting the customer by name or providing another form of special attention can
go a long way toward overcoming the negative feeling of a long wait. Psychologists suggest that servers be told when
to invoke specific friendly actions such as smiling when greeting customers, taking orders, and giving change (for
example, in a convenience store).

∙ Inform your customers of what to expect. This is especially important when the waiting time will be longer than
normal. Tell them why the waiting time is longer than usual and what you are doing to alleviate the wait.

∙ Try to divert the customer’s attention when waiting. Providing music, a video, or some other form of
entertainment may help distract the customers from the fact that they are waiting.

∙ Encourage customers to come during slack periods. Inform customers of times when they usually would not have
to wait; also tell them when the peak periods are—this may help smooth the load.

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 The Queuing System
The queuing system is a process where customers wait in line for service and it consists
essentially of three major components:

(1) the source population and the way customers arrive at the system,
(2) the servicing system, and
(3) the condition of the customers exiting the system (back to source population or not?).

Customer Arrivals: Arrivals at a service system may be drawn from a finite or an infinite
population. The distinction is important because the analyses are based on different premises
and require different equations for their solution.

Finite Population: A finite population refers to the limited-size customer pool that will use
the service and, at times, form a line. The reason this finite classification is important
is that when a customer leaves their position as a member of the population (due to a machine
breaking down and requiring service, for example), the size of the user group is reduced by
one, which reduces the probability of the next occurrence.

Conversely, when a customer is serviced and returns to the user group, the population
increases and the probability of a user requiring service also increases. This finite class of
problems requires a separate set of formulas from that of the infinite population case.

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 Finite Population Situation

Consider a group of six machines maintained by one repairperson. In this case, the
machines are the customers of the repairperson.

When one machine breaks down, the source population is reduced to five, and the
chance of one of the remaining five breaking down and needing repair is certainly
less than when six machines were operating.

If two machines are down with only four operating, the probability of another
breakdown is again changed.

Conversely, when a machine is repaired and returned to service, the machine

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 Infinite Population

An infinite population is large enough in relation to the service system so

If, in the preceding finite explanation, there were 100 customer machines
instead of 6, then if 1 or 2 machines broke down, the probabilities for the
next breakdowns would not be very different and the assumption could be
made without a great deal of error that the population (for all practical
purposes) was infinite.

Nor would the formulas for “infinite” queuing problems cause much error if
applied to a physician with 1,000 patients or a department store with 10,000
customers.

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 Components of Queuing System

Distribution of Arrivals
When describing a waiting system, we need to define the manner in which customers or
the waiting units are arranged for service.

Waiting line formulas generally require an arrival rate, or the number of units per period
(such as an average of one every six minutes).

A constant arrival distribution is periodic, with exactly the same time between successive
arrivals. In productive systems, the only arrivals that truly approach a constant interval
period are those subject to machine control. Much more common are variable (random)
arrival distributions.

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 Distribution of Arrivals

When describing a waiting system, we need to define the manner in which customers or
the waiting units are arranged for service.

Arrival rate is the expected number of customers that arrive each period. A constant
arrival distribution is periodic, with exactly the same time between successive arrivals.

Exponential distribution is a probability distribution associated with the time between

Poisson Distribution
In the second case, where one is interested in the number of arrivals during some time
period T, the distribution is obtained by finding the probability of exactly n arrivals
during T. If the arrival process is random, the distribution is the Poisson, and the
formula is

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 Arrival Characteristics
∙ Arrival patterns. The arrivals at a system are far more controllable than is generally
recognized. Barbers may decrease their Saturday arrival rate (and supposedly shift it to other
days of the week) by charging an extra Rs.1/- for adult haircuts or charging adult prices for
children’s haircuts. Department stores run sales during the off-season or hold one-day-only
sales in part for purposes of control. Airlines offer excursion and off-season rates for similar
reasons. The simplest of all arrival-control devices is the posting of business hours.

Some service demands are clearly uncontrollable, such as emergency medical demands on a
city’s hospital facilities. But even in these situations, arrivals at emergency rooms in specific
hospitals are controllable to some extent by, say, keeping ambulance drivers in the service
region informed of the status of their respective host hospitals.

∙ Size of arrival units. A single arrival may be thought of as one unit. (A unit is the smallest
number handled.) A single arrival at an egg-processing plant might be a dozen eggs or a flat of
2½ dozen; a single arrival at a restaurant is a single person.
A batch arrival is some multiple of the unit, such as a case of eggs at the processing plant, or a
party of five at a restaurant.

∙ Degree of patience. A patient arrival is one who waits as long as necessary until the service
facility is ready to serve him or her.

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 Customer Behaviour
Even if arrivals grumble and behave impatiently, the fact that they wait is sufficient to label
them as patient arrivals for purposes of waiting line theory.

There are two classes of impatient arrivals. Members of the first class arrive, survey both the
service facility and the length of the line, and then decide to leave. Those in the second class
arrive, view the situation, join the waiting line, and then, after some period of time, depart. The
behavior of the first type is termed balking, while the second is termed reneging. To avoid
balking and reneging, companies that provide high service levels typically try to target server
utilization levels (the percentage of time busy) at no more than 70 to 80 percent.
Customer Arrivals in Queues

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 Waiting Lines and Servers

The queuing system consists primarily of the waiting line(s) and the available number of
servers.

Length. In a practical sense, an infinite line is simply one that is very long in terms of
the capacity of the service system.

Examples of infinite potential length are a line of vehicles backed up for miles at a bridge
crossing and customers who must form a line
around the block as they wait to purchase tickets at a theater.

Gas stations, loading docks, and parking lots have limited line capacity caused by legal
restrictions or physical space characteristics.

Number of lines. A single line or single file is, of course, one line only. The term
multiple lines refers to the single lines that form in front of two or more servers or to
single lines that converge at some central redistribution point.

The disadvantage of multiple lines in a busy facility is that arrivals often shift lines if
several previous services have been of short duration or if those customers currently in
other lines appear to require a short service time.

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Queue discipline. A queue discipline is a priority rule or set of rules for determining the
order of service to customers in a waiting line.

Probably the most common priority rule is first come, first served (FCFS). This rule states
that customers in line are served on the basis of their chronological arrival.

Reservations first, emergencies first, highest-profit customer first, largest orders first, best
customers first, longest waiting time in line, and soonest promised date are other examples
of priority rules.

There are two major practical problems in using any rule: One is ensuring that customers
know and follow the rule. The other is ensuring that a system exists to enable employees to
manage the line (such as take-a-number systems).

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Service rate is the number of customers a server can handle during a given time period.

Service rate as the capacity of the server in number of units per time period (such as 12
completions per hour) given service and not as service time, which might average five
minutes each.

A constant service time rule states that each service takes exactly the same time. As in
constant arrivals, this characteristic is generally limited to machine-controlled
operations.

When service times are random, they can be approximated by the exponential
distribution.

When using the exponential distribution as an approximation of the service times, we

Line Structures: the flow of items to be serviced may go through a single line, multiple
lines, or some mixture of the two. The choice of format depends partly on the volume of
customers served and partly on the restrictions imposed by sequential requirements
governing the order in which service must be performed.

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1. Single channel, single phase. This is the simplest type of waiting line structure. A typical
example of a single-channel, single-phase situation is the one-person barbershop.
2. Single channel, multiphase. A car wash is an illustration because a series of services
(vacuuming, wetting, washing, rinsing, drying, window cleaning, and parking) is performed in
a fairly uniform sequence which in turn constitutes separate waiting lines.
3. Multichannel, single phase. Tellers’ windows in a bank and checkout counters in high-
volume department stores exemplify this type of structure. The difficulty with this format is
that the uneven service time given each customer results in unequal speed or flow among the
lines. This results in some customers being served before others who arrived earlier, as well as
in some degree of line shifting.
4. Multichannel, multiphase. This case is similar to the preceding one except that two or
more services are performed in sequence. The admission of patients in a hospital uses this
pattern because a specific sequence of steps is usually followed: initial contact at the
admissions desk, filling out forms, making identification tags, obtaining
a room assignment, escorting the patient to the room, and so forth. Because several servers are
usually available for this procedure, more than one patient at a time may
be processed.
5. Mixed. There are two subcategories: (1) multiple-to single channel structures and (2)
alternative path structures. Under
(1) We see at a bridge crossing where two lanes merge into one
(2) We encounter two structures that differ in directional flow requirements. (a) there may be
switching from one channel to the next after the first service has been rendered and (b) the
number of channels and phases may vary—again—after performance of the first service.

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Line Structures

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 Exiting the Queuing System
Once a customer is served, two exit fates are possible: (1) The customer may return to
the source population and immediately become a competing candidate for service
again or (2) there may be a low probability of reservice.

The first case can be illustrated by a customer machine that has been routinely
repaired and returned to duty but may break down again; the second can be illustrated
by a customer machine that has been overhauled or modified and has a low
probability of reservice over the near future.

In a lighter vein, we might refer to the first as the “recurring common-cold case” and
to the second as the “appendectomy-only-once case”.

It should be apparent that when the population source is finite, any change in the
service performed on customers who return to the population modifies the arrival rate
at the service facility.

This, of course, alters the characteristics of the waiting line under study and
necessitates reanalysis of the problem.

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Properties of some specific waiting line models

Notations for Equations

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Equations for Solving Four Model Problems

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Example for Model 1

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 EXERCISE

1. Distinguish between a channel and a phase.

2. In what way might the first-come, first-served rule be unfair to the customer waiting
for service in a bank or hospital?

3. Define, in a practical sense, what is meant by an exponential service time. Do they

4. A cafeteria serving line has a coffee urn from which customers serve themselves.
Arrivals at the urn follow a Poisson distribution at the rate of three per minute. In
serving themselves, customers take about 15 seconds, exponentially distributed.
a. How many customers would you expect to see, on average, at the coffee urn?
b. How long would you expect it to take to get a cup of coffee?
c. What percentage of time is the urn being used?
d. What is the probability that three or more people are in the cafeteria?
e. If the cafeteria installs an automatic vendor that dispenses a cup of coffee at a
constant time of 15 seconds, how does this change your answers to (a) and (b)?

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Thank You

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