Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues
and it consist of three main concepts namely customers, queues, and
servers (service mechanisms).
The theory enables mathematical analysis of several related processes,
including arriving at the (back of the) queue, waiting in the queue
(essentially a storage process), and being served at the front of the
queue. The theory permits the derivation and calculation of several
performance measures including the average waiting time in the queue or
the system, the expected number waiting or receiving service, and the
probability of encountering the system in certain states, such as empty,
full, having an available server or having to wait a certain time to be
served.
Queueing theory has applications in diverse fields, including
telecommunications, traffic engineering, computing and the design of
factories, shops, offices and hospitals.
Applications of Queueing Theory
Queueing Theory has a wide range of applications, and this section is
designed to give an illustration of some of these. It has been divided into
3 main sections, Traffic Flow, Scheduling and Facility Design and
Employee Allocation. The given examples are certainly not the only
applications where queuing theory can be put to good use, some other
areas that queueing theory is used are also given below;
1. Design of a garage forecourt
2. Airports - runway layout, luggage collection, shops, passport control
etc.
3. Hair dressers
4. Supermarkets
5. Restaurants
6. Manufacturing processes
7. Bus scheduling
8. Hospital appointment bookings
9. Printer queues
Traffic Flow
This is concerned with the flow of objects around a network, avoiding
congestion and trying to maintain a steady flow, in all directions. For
example;
• Queueing on roads: Queues in the rush hour.
Scheduling
• Computer scheduling
Facility Design and Employee Management
• Queues in a bank
• A Mail Sorting Office
For the purpose of this assignment, the queueing theory applications
treated were the queues formed on the road during rush hour and queues
in the bank respectively.
Queueing on Roads
Introduction
The study of vehicle flow along a road can be classed as a deterministic
flow, because the number of cars flowing within a particular time span can
be predicted by averaging previously collected data for that day of the
week and time.
For the purposes of analysing the vehicle flow on roads, it is normal to
monitor the frequency of vehicles in small time groups, over a period of
months, and then average out the days in the months, in order to obtain
an average flow for each day of the week. This will have the effect of
removing, or at least reducing the effect of, unusual days, when the traffic
flow was very different to normal. There is little use in trying to
accommodate for these days as the change in traffic flow when something
does upset the system is very hard to predict, if it is at all predictable.
We only covered one type of queue that commonly occurs on the road:
• Queues forming during the rush hour
Queues forming during the Rush Hour
Introduction
This example discusses how it is possible to model the build up of traffic in
the rush hour, and thus to see when queues form on a straight road,
without junctions, relative to the arrival rate of cars on the section of the
road.
Symbols Used
Symbol Represents
Q(t) Queue length at time t
A(t) Cumulative arrivals to the queue at time t
Cumulative departures from the queue at
D(t)
time t
The maximum service rate
(t) The service rate at time t
(t) Arrival rate at time t
Modelling the Queue
In the rush hour the arrival rate, (t), will rise until it reaches a maximum
rate (i.e. the time when the most people reach the point of road, when
they are trying to get to work), after this point the arrival rate will
decrease. There are four main points in this flow, as follows:
Time
Significance
label
The first point at which (t) equals the maximum service
t0
rate,
t1 The point where (t) is a maximum
t2 The point where (t) has decreased back down to
t3 The point where the queue has gone, and so (t) = (t)
The above details tend to imply that a graph of (t) is quadratic, and so
would be differentiable twice at or near t1. This means that (t) has a
Taylor expansion about the point t1:
for constant :
For small t-t1, i.e. this is valid where t0 < t < t3
this means that t0 and t2 can be estimated, by substitution:
The length of the queue is the area between the curves of (t) and (t),
i.e.:
By the using similar substitutions to those used in the previous derivation
we can simplify this to:
Queues in a Bank
Introduction
As a rule people dislike queueing in banks, and so in order to improve the
level of service a bank manager is interested to find out:
1. The average number of people waiting in the bank (i.e. the queue
length)
2. How much of the cashiers' time is spent idle (as a percentage of
their time)
Model Assumptions and Details
• The distribution of the length of time it takes the cashiers to carry
out a task is exponential, with mean 2 minutes and standard
deviation of 5/4 minutes
• There is virtually no limit on the queue length, as the bank has a
large floor area
• Customers arrive in a Poisson distribution, with mean of 25 per hour
• Service is done on a first come first serve basis
• This is an M/M/c queue, where 1 =< c =< 5
Symbols
Symbo
Meaning, and value if in assumptions
l
c Number of cashiers (servers)
Lq Average length of the queue
W Percentage of cashiers idle (waiting) time
Mean arrival rate (25 per hour)
1/(mean time to server customers) = 30 per
hour
Average amount of work for each server, per
p
hour
Calculations
From the above we can easily calculate the following values, which are
used to work out Lq and W:
p0 and Lq, W and the idle time can be calculated using the following
equations:
The results of these equations for 1 to 5 cashiers are summarised in the
following table:
Cashier p r^n / p0 Lq W Idle
s n!
0.83 0.16
1 0.833 4.167 0.2 0.167
3 7
0.41 0.41
2 0.347 0.175 0.04 0.583
7 2
0.27 0.43 0.03
3 0.096 0.022 0.722
8 2 4
0.20 0.43 0.03
4 0.02 0.003 0.792
8 4 3
0.16 0.43 0.03
5 0.003 0.000 0.833
7 5 3
From the table it can be seen that either 1 or 2 cashiers should be
employed, as this will keep a short queue, but without the cashiers being
idle too much of the time.
