A group of items waiting to receive service,

including those receiving a service is known

as a waiting line or queue.
Queuing theory involves the mathematical
study of queues or waiting lines
The formation of waiting lines is a common
phenomenon which occurs whenever the
current demand for a service exceeds the
current capacity to provide that service.
The queuing theory, also called the waiting
line theory, owes its development to A K
Erlangs effort to analyze telephone traffic
congestion with a view to satisfy the
randomly arising demand for the services of
the Copenhagen automatic system, in the
year 1909.
Banking transactions
Passage of customers through a supermarket
checkout
Cinema ticket window
Reservation office
Doctors Clinic
Registration of unemployed at employment
exchange
Balking. A customer may not like to wait in a queue
due to lack of time or space or otherwise.
Reneging. A customer may leave the queue due to
impatience
Collusion. Some customers may collaborate and
only one of them may join the queue and purchase
tickets for his friends
Jockeying. If there are more than one queues then
one customer may leave one queue and join the
other. This occurs generally in supermarket

The input
Queue
The service discipline (Service system )
The service Mechanism (Service Pattern)

ARRIVAL SYSTEM
(How customers arrive)
QUEUE
(The nature of the
waiting line or lines
of customers)
SERVICE FACILITY
(How customers progress
through the service facility)
Input
source
Queue
Discipline
Service
Facility
Served
Customers
Balking Customers

Reneging Customers

Waiting Line Models
Customer
population
Served
customers
Arrival
System
Service System
Waiting line
(Queue)
Priority
rule
Service
facilities
The sequence in which
customers are admitted
into the service facility.
The input describes the pattern in which customers
arrive for service. Since the servicing units
(customers) arrive in a random fashion, therefore
their arrival pattern can be described in terms of
probabilities. Here , we assume that they arrive
according to a Poisson process i.e., the number of
units arriving until any specific time has a Poisson
distribution. This is a case where arrivals to the
queuing system occurs at random, but at a certain
average rate.
Arrival Populations are either
Limited (EG: Only people age 21 or over.)
Unlimited (EG: cars arriving at a toll booth)
Arrival Patterns are either
Random (Each arrival is independent)
Scheduled (EG: Doctors office visits)
Behavior of the Arrivals
Balking (Seeing a long line and avoiding it.)
Reneging (Get tired of waiting and leave the
line)
Jockeying (Switching lines)
The units requiring service enter the queuing
system on their arrival and join a queue
which is characterized by the maximum
permissible number of units that it can
contain. A queue is called finite if the number
of units in it is finite otherwise it is called
infinite.
The service discipline refers to the manner in
which the members in the queue are chosen
for service.
First come, first served (FCFS)
Last come, first served (LCFS)
Service at random order
Service on some priority-procedure

The pattern according to which the customers
are served. Here in this unit, we shall deal
with queuing models in which service time
follows the Exponential and Erlang
distribution
Facilities given to customers i.e., single
channel or multiple channel.
Channels are the paths (ways to get through
the system) after getting in line?
EG: McDonalds drive-thru is one channel.

Phases are the number of stops a customer
must make, after getting in line?
(Single-phase means only one stop for service.)
McDonalds drive-thru is a three-phase system:

Order Pay Pick-up
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Once in line, you have at least two choices of how to get through
the system, but only one stop.
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Once in line, you have at least two choices (channels) of how to get
through the system and at least two stops (phases).
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Service
Facility
Queue length. Queue length is defined by
the number of persons (customers) waiting
in the line at a time
Busy Period. Busy-period of a server is the
time during which he remains busy in
servicing. Thus it is a time between the start
of service of the first unit to the end of
service of the last unit in the queue.

Average length of line. Average length of line
(or queue) is defined by the number of
customers in the queue per unit time.
Waiting time. It is the time up to which a unit
has to wait in the queue before it is taken
into service.
Servicing time. The time taken for servicing of
a unit is called a servicing time.
Idle Period. When all the units in the queue
are served, the idle period of the server
begins and it continues up to the time of
arrival of the unit (customer). The idle period
of a server is the time during which he
remains free because there is no customer
present in the system.
Mean Servicing Rate. The mean servicing rate for a
particular servicing station is defined as the
expected number of services completed in a time
interval of length unity, given that servicing is
going on throughout the entire time unit.
Mean Arrival Rate. The mean arrival rate in a
waiting line situation is defined as the expected
number of arrivals occurring in a time interval of
length unity.

Traffic Intensity. In case of a simple queue
the traffic intensity is the ratio of mean arrival
rate and the mean servicing rate.

rate servicing Mean
rate arrival Mean
Intensity Traffic
Transient State
Steady State
Explosive State
A system is said to be in transient state when
its operating characteristics are dependent on
time. Thus a queuing system is in transient
state when the probability distributions of
arrivals , waiting time and servicing time of
the customers are dependent on time. This
state occurs at the beginning of the operation
of the system.
A system is said to be in steady state when its
operating characteristics become independent of
time. Thus a queuing system acquired steady state
when the probability distribution of arrivals,
waiting time and servicing time of the customers
are independent on time. This state occurs in the
long run of the system. In most of the queuing
problems, steady state solutions exists
independent of the initial state of the queue.
If the arrival rate of the system is more than
its servicing rate, the length of the queue will
go on increasing with time and will tend to
infinity as t tends to infinity. This state of the
system is known to be explosive state
1st Attendant
2nd Attendant
Single
Attendant
Which system is less expensive?
(It depends on the relative costs of service versus waiting.)
The costs of waiting
Losing customers because of long lines
Reneging: Customers get tired of waiting and leave
Balking: Customers see a long line and dont get in line.
Paying employees to wait for something they
need. (waiting for parts, supplies, deliveries, etc.)
Unusable (idle) equipment awaiting repairs
EG: Broken assembly line machinery.
The cost of providing service
Paying people to provide service to customers
Customers can be people, machines, or other objects needing
service.
Number of Servers
Costs
Costs of Waiting
goes down as service
improves.
Optimal # of servers
Note that the lowest cost system requires some customer waiting.
Fewer
servers often
means longer
waiting for
customers.
Many servers
means little or no
waiting, but higher
service costs.
Paying repairmen to fix broken machines
Paying dock workers to load and unload trucks
Paying customer-service people
Using more production people to speed up the
line
Leasing of service equipment and facilities
Paying checkout cashiers
On an average 5 customers reach a barber's
shop every hour. Determine the probability
that exactly 2 customers will reach in a 30-
minute period, assuming that the arrivals
follow Poisson distribution?
The manager of a bank observes that, on the
average, 18 customers are served by a
cashier in an hour. Assuming that the service
time has an exponential distribution, what is
the probability that (a) a customer shall be
free within 3 minutes (b) a customer shall be
serviced in more than 12 minutes?
a) Queue length
average number of customers in queue waiting to get service
b) System length
average number of customers in the system
c) Waiting time in queue
average waiting time of a customer to get service
d) Total time in system
average time a customer spends in the system
e) Server idle time
relative frequency with which system is idle

Assumptions:
Arrivals are Poisson with a mean arrival rate of, say

Service time is exponential, rate being
Source population is infinite
Customer service on first come first served basis
Single service station
For the system to be workable,

The arrival rate of a customer at a service window
of a cinema hall follows a probability distribution
with a mean rate of 45 per hour. The service rate of
the clerk follows Poisson distribution with a mean
of 60 per hour.
What is the probability of having customer in the
system?
What is the probability of having 5 customers in the
system
Find average number of customers in the system


The rate of arrival of customers at a public
telephone booth follows Poisson distribution with
an average time of 10 minutes between one
customer and the next. The duration of a phone
call is assumed to follow exponential distribution,
with mean time of 3 minutes.
(i) What is the probability that a person arriving at
the booth will have to wait?
(ii) Estimate the fraction of a day that the phone will
be in use
What is the average length of the non-empty
queues that form from time to time?
The average number of persons waiting and
making telephone calls; and
The MTNL will install a second booth when it is
convinced that the customer would expect
waiting for at least 3 minutes for their turn to
make a call. By how much time should flow of
customers increase in order to justify a second
booth?