Waiting Lines

Waiting Lines Example

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1.

Students arrive at the Administrative Services Office at an

average of one every 15 minutes, and their request take on
average 10 minutes to be processed. The service counter is
staffed by only one clerk, Judy Gumshoes, who works eight
hours per day. Assume Poisson arrivals and exponential
service times.
M/M/1 System
= 4 customers/hour
= 6 customers/hour

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M/M/1 System
= 4 customers/hour
= 6 customers/hour

a) What percentage of time is Judy idle?

1-/ = 33.33%
b) How much time, on average, does a student spend waiting
in line?
Wq = / (-)
= 1/3 hours or 20 minutes

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M/M/1 System
= 4 customers/hour
= 6 customers/hour

c) How long is the (waiting line) on average?

Lq = Wq
= 4/3 customers
d) What is the probability that an arriving student (just
before entering the Administrative Services Office) will
find at least one other student waiting in line?
=1-P0-P1
= 1 (1-/) - /(1-/)
= 4/9, or 0.44

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2. At the California border inspection station, vehicles arrive at

the rate of 10 per minute in a Poisson distribution. For
simplicity in this problem, assume that there is only one lane
and one inspector, who can inspect vehicles at the rate of 12
per minute in an exponentially distributed fashion.
The California border inspection station is considering the
addition of a second inspector. The vehicles would wait in
one lane and then be directed to the first available inspector.
Arrival rates would remain the same (10 per minute) and the
new inspector would process vehicles at the same rate as the
first inspector (12 per minute).

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M/M/S System
= 10 vehicles/minute
= 12 vehicles/minute

a) What would be the average length of the waiting line?

0.175 vehicles
b) What would be the average time that a vehicles must wait
to get through the system?
0.101 minutes, or 6.06 seconds

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If a second lane was added (one lane for each inspector):

2 M/M/1 Systems
= 5 vehicles/minute
= 12 vehicles/minute

c) What would be the average length of the waiting line?

0.298 vehicles per line 0.298*2 = 0.596
d) What would be the average time that a vehicle must wait
to get through the system?
0.143 minutes, or 8.58 seconds

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3. You are working at a bank and doing resource requirements

planning. You think that there should be six tellers working in
the bank. Tellers take 15 minutes per customer with a
standard deviation of 5 minutes. On average one customer
arrives in every three minutes according to an exponential
distribution (recall that the standard deviation is equal to the
mean).

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S=6
= 20 customers/hour
= 4 customers/hour
= / S = 20 / (4*6) = 0.83
Ca = 1, Cs = 5/15 = 0.33
2 ( S 1) Ca2 C s2
Lq

1
2

a) On average how many customer would be waiting in line?

Lq = 1.68
b) On average how long would a customer spend in the bank?
Ws = Wq + (1/) = (Lq/) + (1/)
= 0.334 hours = 20.05 minutes

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4. Consider a call center that employs 8 agents. Past data

collected on the customer inter-arrival times has shown that
the mean time between customer arrivals is 1 minute, and has
a standard deviation of 1/2 minute. The amount of time in
minutes the past 10 callers have spent talking to an agent is as
follows:
4.1, 6.2, 5.5, 3.5, 3.2, 7.3, 8.4, 6.3, 2.6, 4.9.

a) What is the coefficient of variation for the inter-arrival

times?
(standard deviation) / mean = 0.5/1 = 0.5
b) What is the mean time a caller spends talking to an agent?
= 5.2 minutes

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c) What is the standard deviation of the time a caller spends

talking to an agent?
= 1.88 minutes
d) What is the coefficient of variation for the times a caller
spends talking to an agent?
(standard deviation) / mean = 5.2/1.88 = 2.77
(standard deviation) / mean = 1.88/5.2 = 0.192

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e) What is the expected number of callers on hold, waiting to

talk to an agent?
= 1 per minute
= 1/5.2 = 0.192 per minute
2 ( S 1) Ca2 C s2
Lq

S=8
1
2
= /(S ) = 1/(0.192*8) = 0.65
Upart = 0.46 Vpart = 0.19
Lq = Upart*Vpart = 0.087
Lq = 1.8

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f) What is the expected number of callers either on hold or

talking to an agent?
Ls = Lq + S = 7 (5.287)
g) What is the expected amount of time a caller must wait to
talk to an agent?
Wq = Lq / = 1.8 minutes
h) What is the expected amount of time between when a caller
first arrives to the system, and when that caller finishes
talking to an agent?
Ws = Ls / = 7 minutes

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5. Wells Fargo operates one ATM machine in a certain Trader

Joes. There is on average 8 customers that use the ATM
every hour, and each customer spends on average 6 minutes
at the ATM. Assume customer arrivals follow a Poisson
process, and the amount of time each customer spends at the
ATM follows as exponential distribution.
a) What is the percentage of time the ATM is in use?
= 8 per hour
= 10 per hour
= 8/10 = 0.8
=80%

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b) Suppose that the percentage of time the ATM is in use is 0.8.

(This may or may not be the answer you found in (a).)
b1) What is the probability there is more than one customer
waiting in the line to use the ATM?
X = number of customers either using the ATM or waiting to
use the ATM
P( X=n ) = n(1- )
P( X > 2 ) = 1 P(X=0) P(X=1) P(X=2)
= 1 (1- ) (1- ) 2(1- ) = 1-(1- + - 2 + 2 - 3 )
= 3 = 0.512

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b) Suppose that the percentage of time the ATM is in use is 0.8.

(This may or may not be the answer you found in (a).)
b2) On average, how many customers are in line waiting to use
the ATM?
L
2 ( S 1) Ca2 Cs2 0.82
Lq

3.2
1
2
0.2

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c) Suppose that the number of customers in line waiting to use the

ATM is 3. (This may or may not be the answer you found in
parts b or c). All information remains as originally stated.
What is the average time a customer must wait to use the
ATM? State your answer in minutes.
Wq = Lq/ = 3/8 [3(60)]/8 = 22.5 minutes

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6. Matador housing office has one customer representative for walk-in students. The
arrival rate 10 customers per hour and the average service time is 5 minutes. Both
inter-arrival time and service time follow exponential distributions.
a) What is the average waiting time in line?
= 10 customers/hour, = 20 customers/hour
Wq = /(( )) = 0.05 hour = 3 minutes
or Wq = ma 2/(1 )*(1+1)/2 = 0.05 hour
b) What is the probability that an arriving student (just before entering the
housing office) will find at least two other student waiting in line?
1 P0 P1 = 0.25

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7. Monterey post station has 7 tellers from Monday to Saturday.

Customers arrive to the station following a Poisson process
with rate 36 customers per hour. The service time is
exponentially distributed with mean 10 minutes.
a) What is the utilization rate of the tellers?
= 36 customers/hour, = 6 customers/hour
= /S = 36/42 = 6/7 = 85.7%
b) What is the average number of customers waiting in line?
(Lq =4/(1 )*(1+1)/2 = 3.78

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On Sunday, instead of tellers, the post station only opens 3 auto-mail

machines to provide automatic service. Each machine can weight
different size of package, print self-adhesive labels and accept
payments. Arrival is Poisson with rate 20 customers per hour. The
service time is 4 minutes with probability 0.75 and 20 minutes with
probability 0.25.
c) What is the mean service time?
ms = 4*0.75 + 16 * 0.25 = 8 minutes
d) What is the coefficient of variation of service time?
Ss = sqrt (0.75 * 32 + 0.25 * 92 ) = 6.93
Cs = 6.93 / 7 = 0.866

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e) What is the utilization rate?

= 20 customers/hour, = 60/8 = 7.5 customers/hour
= /S = 20/(3*7.5) = 88.9%
f) What is the average number of customers waiting in line?
2 ( S 1) Ca2 Cs2
Lq

5.64
1
2

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8. Bank of San Pedro has only one teller. On average, one customer comes every 6
minutes, and it takes the teller an average of 3 minutes to serve a customer. To
improve customer satisfaction, the bank is going to implement a unique policy
called, We Pay While You Wait. Once implemented, the bank will pay each
customer $3 per minute while she or he waits in line. (So the clock starts when a
customer comes to the end of the line, and stops when he or she begins to talk to
the teller.) Bank of San Pedro hired you as a consultant and you are responsible for
estimating how much the We Pay While You Wait program will cost. Your
preliminary study indicates there are, on average, 0.5 customers waiting in line
Assume linear cost. If a customer waits for 20 seconds in line, Bank of San Pedro
will pay $1.

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a) Calculate the capacity of the teller. State the unit.

60/3=20 customers per hour.
b) Calculate proportion of the time the teller is busy.
0.5 or 50%
c) How long, on average, does a customer wait in line? State the unit.
0.5/10 = 0.05 hours or 3 minutes.

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d) Calculate the expected hourly cost of the We Pay While You

Wait program.
Each customer waits, on average, 3 minutes.
So he or she receives, on average, 3*3=$9.
There are 10 customers arriving per hour.
So the overall cost of this program is 9*10=$90