Unit- 7 : Waiting Line Theory

1. Economics of the Waiting Line problem

2. The Queuing System
3. Waiting Line Characteristics
4. Simple Waiting Line Models

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 INTRODUCTION
Waiting lines are the most frequently encountered problems in
everyday life. For example, queue at a cafeteria, library, bank,
etc. Common to all of these cases are the arrivals of objects
requiring service and the attendant delays when the service
mechanism is busy. Waiting lines cannot be eliminated
completely, but suitable techniques can be used to reduce the
waiting time of an object in the system. A long waiting line
may result in loss of customers to an organization. Waiting
time can be reduced by providing additional service facilities,
but it may result in an increase in the idle time of the service
mechanism. 2
 Waiting Line Theory
• Waiting Line Theory, which deals with the study of queues or
waiting lines, is one of the most important areas of operation
management.
• In organizations or in personal life, there are examples of processes
which generate waiting lines or queues
• Such waiting lines occur because the current service facility
insufficient to provide service at that instance.

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The following situations are examples of how queuing theory
can be applied:
• Waiting in line at a bank or a store
• Waiting for a customer service representative to answer a call after
the call has been placed on hold
• Waiting for a train to come
• Waiting for a computer to perform a task or respond
• Waiting for an automated car wash to clean a line of cars

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 A Queue is formed under two conditions:

• Customer wait for getting service

• Service facilities wait for customers

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 Customer wait for getting service
This means that the service facility is not having
appropriate capacity to render the service as and when
customers are arrive and the customers have to wait or
stand in queue for getting service later on. More
precisely this is the condition where arrival rate of
customers at the service are higher than the service rate.

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 Service facilities wait for customers
This means that the service facilities are
having excessive capacity and are staying idle
due to lack of customers. More precisely this
condition can be stated as “service rate of
facilities are higher than the customers arrival
rate”.

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• The central problem in virtually every waiting line situation is a trade-off
decision between cost of service capacity and waiting line cost.
• Providing too much service facilities for eliminating customer queue
involve excessive cost that not be justifiable.
• Since unlimited capacity could not be installed and capacity required
significantly differ from peak or rush hours compared to normal hours, it
is quite difficult to fix capacity requirement.
• On the other hand, not providing enough service capacity would cause
the waiting lines to become excessively long at times.
• Customers even before joining the queue get discouraged by seeing the
excessive waiting time for service or customers after joining the queue
leave the service system due to intolerable delay.
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• Therefore the ultimate goal is to achieve the economic
balance between cost of service capacity and waiting line
cost.
• Queuing theory contributes vital information required for
such a decision by predicting various characteristics of
waiting line such as the average number of customer in queue
or system, time spent by customer in queue or system etc.
• Based on the probability theory it attempts to minimize the
extent and duration of queue with minimum of investment
cost.
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 Economies of the Waiting Line problem
• A waiting line is a line or list of customers who remain waiting for
getting certain goods or service from service center.
• There are two types of line formed namely a physical line or a list of
dispersed customers.
• When the customers remain standing in a line in front of a service
center or counter, it is called physical queue of waiting line.
• When the customers remain waiting for certain service after enlisting
their names or submitting their application in the service center, it is
called waiting list of customers, e.g. list of customers waiting for gas
cylinders, admission into an institution etc.
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• The queuing (waiting line) theory deals with the
analysis of queues and queuing behavior by finding
solution to the problem relating to the optimization
of the effectiveness of the defined function with
random times of arrival and service.
• Optimization here referred to minimization the total
cost of queuing system. Total cost include:
»Cost of providing service
»Cost of waiting
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• These two costs are inversely proportional to each other. Addition of
more service centers will increase the service capacity and ultimately
minimize the waiting line or waiting cost.
• However addition of service facility would ultimately increase the
costs providing service.
• Similarly, if the numbers of service center are reduced, it minimizes
the service costs but increase the waiting costs.
• Thus the objective of queuing theory is to minimum the total cost
associated with the queuing system.
• The relationship between these two costs is shown in following
figure;
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Cost of Trade-off of operating service facility 13
• Thus the objective of the queuing theory is simply to determine the
service level where the total cost of system is lowest.
• This is the point where cost of service capacity line and waiting line
cost cross each other. At this point of minimum total cost, waiting
line cost will be equal to cost of providing service.
• However, it is important note that queuing theory does not directly
solve the problem of minimizing the total waiting and service cost
but the theory provides the management with necessary information
by estimating different characteristics of the waiting line such as:
» Average arrival rate
» Average service rate
» Average length of queue
» Average waiting time
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» Average time spent in system.
 Waiting Line (Queuing) System
• The essential features of a waiting line system are shown in
following figure. This consist of
• Input source (or calling population)
• Queuing process
• Queue discipline
• Service process (or mechanism)
• Departure pattern

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• Customers requiring service are generated at different times by an input source,
commonly known as population. The rate (constant or random) at which customers
arrive at service facility is determined by the arrival process.
• Customers’ entry into the service system depends upon the queue conditions.
• Customers are served immediately if the service facility is idle at the time of their
arrival.
• However if the facilities are not idle they have to stand on the queue, which can have the
several configurations.
• Customers from the queue are selected for service according to certain rule known as
queue discipline.
• The service facility may consists of no server (self service), one or more server arranged
in series of parallel.
• The rate (constant or random) at which customers arrive and service is rendered is
known as arrival rate and service rate respectively.
• Once the service rendered, customers leave the system which is called as departure. 16
 Components of a Basic Queuing Process

Input Source The Queuing System

Served Jobs
Calling Jobs Service
Queue Mechanism
Population
leave the
system

Arrival Queue Discipline

Process
Service Process
Queue
Configuration
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 Waiting Line Characteristics
• Arrivals or inputs to the system: These have characteristics
such as population size, behavior, and a statistical
distribution.
• 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.
• The service facility: Its characteristics include its design
and the statistical distribution of service times.
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 Waiting Line Models
• According to the arrangement of service facilities,
queuing system can be classified as:
• Single channel system
• Multi channel system
• Single queue with many service counter system
• Many queue with single service counter system
• Multistage system
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 Single channel system
Under this arrangement of queuing system,
there is one queue for one service station.
This arrangement is done where the size of
queue is expected to be small and the
service center is not afford for more than
one counter. The model of this system is
shown on figure as:
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Single channel system

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Assumption of single channel waiting line model
The single channel, single phase model considered have is one of the most widely used and simplest
queuing models. It assumes the existence of following seven conditions:
1. Arrivals are served on the first come first served (FCFS)
2. Every arrivals waits to be served regardless of the length of time
3. Arrivals are independent of preceding arrivals, but the average number of arrivals (the arrival
rate) does not change over time.
4. Arrivals are described by a Poisson probability distribution and come from an infinite or very
large population.
5. Service time also varies from one customer to next and is independent of the , but their
average rate is known.
6. Service time occur according to the negative exponential probability distribution.
7. The average service rate (μ) is greater than the average arrival rate () i.e ratio μ/  which
is called traffic intensity or utilization factor is always less than one, and the length of queue
will go on diminishing gradually.
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 Multi channel system

Under this arrangement of seduce facility, a

service center opens a numbered of service
counter and different queue and made according
to service. When the size of entire population is
expected to be large, this system is suitable as
shown in figure:
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Single queue with many service counter
system
Under this system, there is a single queue
but multiple service counters. When there
is no feasibility for multiple queues but
queue is long to handle, this system is
suitable.
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Single queue with many service counter
system

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Many queue with single service counter
system

Under this system there are multiple queues

but only one service counter. When there is
not feasibility for more service counter and
size of calling population is large to handle
in a single queue, this model is suitable.

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 Multistage system
Under this arrangement, a service centers open
different service counter for providing services in
sequence and customer are asked to pass through
required counters for getting respective service.
This model is suitable when customer require
varieties of service in respective order.
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