Operations Management: An Integrated Approach, 5th Edition

Supplement Highlights

The elements of a waiting line system include the customer population source, the patience of the customer, the service system, arrival and service distributions, waiting line priority rules, and system performance measures. Understanding these elements is critical when analyzing waiting line systems.

Waiting line models allow us to estimate system performance by predicting average system utilization, average number of customers in the service system, average number of customers waiting in line, average time a customer spends in the system, average time a customer waits in line, and the probability of n customers in the service system.

The benefit of calculating operational characteristics is to provide management with information as to whether system changes are needed. Management can change the operational performance of the waiting line system by altering any or all of the following: the customer arrival rates, the number of service facilities, the number of phases, server efficiency, the priority rule, and the number of lines in the system. Based on proposed changes, management can then evaluate the expected performance of the system.