NATIONAL ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND SYSTEMS

AREA OF SYSTEMS, COMPUTING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Course Operations Research II

Code ST-123V
Professor Ing. César Aldo Canelo Sotelo

Proposed Problems: Queues

A stockbroker manages a portfolio of common stocks. His computers

they review stock prices and, when certain conditions are met, they issue
buy or sell signals. These signals follow a Poisson process with a
average of one every 15 minutes. Before acting according to the recommendations of
the computers, a financial analyst evaluates the scenario and makes a decision
final about the number of shares that should be traded, if it needs to be done. The
The time to perform this evaluation follows an exponential distribution with a
average of 12 minutes. Answer:
a) What is the average arrival rate of the signals?
b) What is the probability of exactly five buy/sell signals?
are generated in an hour?
c) If the computers have just issued a buy/sell signal, what is the
probability that the next one will be issued in the next ten minutes?
d) What is the average number of buy/sell signals that an analyst
Can you drive for a period of three hours?
e) If a buy/sell signal arrives, what is the probability that the
Analyst, will you finish the evaluation in 15 minutes?
f) Delays are expected if the response time exceeds 20 minutes
What is the probability that delays will occur?

2. Customers arrive at an ATM at a random rate of 5 per hour, and the

service is also provided randomly at an average rate of 10 clients per
time. Determine:
a) The probability that three customers arrive in one hour.
b) The probability that no customer requests the service during the period
for an hour.
c) The probability that more than three customers arrive to request the service
during a period of one hour.
d) The probability that the customer service time lasts more than 6
minutes.
e) The probability that a customer is attended to immediately upon arrival
to the cashier.
f) The average time a customer spends at the cashier, both waiting for the
service as receiving it.
g) How many customers are typically waiting in line for the
automatic teller machines serve you.

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3. In a bank that offers service to motorists at the teller, the customers
Drivers arrive at random at a rate of 16 per hour. Each cashier can handle
transactions at a rate of 8 per hour. The service is provided on the basis that
attend to the first one that arrives and there is enough space in the parking lot of the
bank to accommodate as many motorists as necessary. Currently
There are 4 parallel support lines that operate independently.
a) Determine the characteristics of the waiting lines for the system.
b) Determine the operating characteristics for an M/M/S system.

An average of 50 customers per hour arrive at a small post office.

The times between arrivals and service times are exponentially
distributed. Each window serves an average of 25 customers per hour.
It costs $25 per hour to open a window, and the office values the time that a
customer is waiting in line at $15/hour-customer. To minimize costs
as expected per hour, determine how many windows must be open. Justify.
your answer.

5. A tire distributor has decided to hire a new mechanic to

make all tire changes for customers who buy a new set
of tires. Two mechanics have applied for the job. One has experience
limited and can be hired for $7 an hour. It is expected that this worker can
to attend to an average of 3 clients per hour. The other has several years of
experience and can serve an average of 4 clients per hour, but is
must pay $10 an hour. Assume that customers arrive at the workshop at a rate of 2 per
time. Determine:
a) The operational characteristics for each mechanic.
b) If the workshop assigns a waiting cost for customers of $15 per hour, what
Does the mechanic offer the lowest operating cost?

6. A company offers advice on home and office decoration to its

clients. Under normal operating conditions, an average of 3 clients arrives.
For now. A design consultant is available to assist clients.
The consultant spends an average of 10 minutes with each client.

a) Service goals require that a customer arriving should not have to wait.
to be attended to for more than an average of 5 minutes. Is it being achieved?
Is this the goal? What action would you recommend?
b) If the consultant can reduce the average time spent with each client
In 8 minutes, will the goal be achieved this way?
c) Regarding the previous problem, it is intended to evaluate two alternatives:
i. Use a consultant with an average service time of 8
minutes per client.
ii. Expand the availability to two consultants, each of whom
with an average service time of 10 minutes per customer. The
Customers form a single line to be attended.

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 If consultants are paid $16 an hour and it is considered that the time of
the customers' wait costs $25 per hour, for the time they wait before receiving
the service. What service system should be used?

In a computer repair shop, computers are assigned to one

of the three available technicians. For quality control reasons, once that
assign a computer to a technician, it is not assigned to another. Assuming that the
arrivals occur according to the Poisson distribution at a rate of 4 per day and
Service times follow an exponential distribution at a rate of 2 per day.
for each technician, determine:
a) The average time a computer remains in the center of
service.
b) The average time that a computer is waiting to be given
the service.

8. A car rental company operates its own car wash facility and
car cleaning to prepare them for rental. The cars arrive at
the cleaning installation randomly at a rate of 5 per day. The company
it has been determined that cars can be cleaned at a rate of 2n per day,
where is the number of people who work cleaning the car. By
For example, if there are 4 people working, the washing rate is 8.
cars per day. It has been determined that the washing process conforms to the
negative exponential distribution. The company pays its workers $30 for
day and has determined that the cost for a car that is not available for
Renting it is $25 per day. Determine:

a) The number of employees that must be hired in the washing facility,

to achieve the lowest cost.
b) Determine the operational characteristics of the queue for the number of
employees he/she chose.

A window that operates 8 hours a day serves 48 customers per hour.

On average. The service takes 6 minutes on average. Customers arrive at random.
according to the Poisson distribution and service times are distributed
exponentially. The manager wants to assign a sufficient number of employees
at the counter, in such a way that there are no waiting customers for service more than
20% of the time.
a) How many employees should be assigned to the service counter?
b) On average, how long does a customer wait to be attended to?

10. Customers arrive at a bank according to a Poisson distribution, with

an average of 48 customers per hour. Transactions per customer take a
an average of 5 minutes and are distributed exponentially. The bank wants
use a multi-line cashier operation with a single line of wait. The manager
is aware of the fact that customers may switch to other banks if
they perceive that their wait in line is excessive. For this reason, the manager wants
limit the average waiting time in line to no more than 2 minutes.

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 So that no customer has to wait in line for more than 2 minutes
How many ATMs should the bank have in service?

11. A supermarket must decide how many cash registers to maintain.

open. An average of 18 customers arrives every hour. The average time in
that a customer settles their account is 4 minutes. The times between arrivals and the
Service times are exponential. It costs $20 per hour to operate a cash register.
register, and a cost of $0.25 is set for every minute the customer spends in the
area of the cash registers.
a) Determine how many cash registers should be kept open.
b) For the number of boxes determined in a), on average how much time
Does a customer remain in the system?

A state transportation office has 3 safety research teams.

whose job is to analyze the conditions of the roads when
produce a fatal accident. The teams are equally efficient and each one
spend an average of 2 days researching and preparing the corresponding report
in each case, with a seemingly exponential real time. The number of
accidents on the road follow a Poisson distribution with a mean rate of 300
accidents per year.
Determine:
a) The average number of accidents whose investigation has not started.
b) The probability that there are 2 accidents under investigation in the system.
c) The average time from when an accident occurs until it starts to
investigate.
d) Average time from the occurrence of an accident until it is resolved
research.
e) Average number of accidents whose investigation has not yet been completed.

13. A small bank must determine how many tellers to hire. The cost per
Employing a cashier is $12.50 per hour, and a cashier can serve an average of
6 clients per hour. On average, 12 clients arrive at the bank per hour.
arrival times and service times are exponential. The cost per
Delay per hour-client at the bank is $15, and we want to operate at the lowest cost.
Possible. Consider that the customers form a single queue. Determine:
a) How many tellers should the bank hire?
b) For the answer obtained in a), on average, how long should one wait?
customer before being attended?

14. The manager of a grain export company needs to determine the cost that
it means operating only with its own dock and the option to rent a dock
additional. Both docks have the capacity to accommodate only one ship at a time.
The ships arrive randomly at an average rate of one per day. The exporter has
agreed to pay the boat owner $1000 for each day that he invests in
be loaded or waiting to be loaded. The loading of the ships is done
teams of 3 people, which have a loading capacity of 1/4 of a ship per day.
The teams work shifts of 8 hours, 7 days a week and each worker earns

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$10 per hour. The rental of the additional facility costs you $500 daily. In
At both docks, the loading teams work with the same efficiency. Assume
that the same number of loading equipment is assigned in both facilities.
Determine the loading equipment configuration that represents the least
total cost for the company.