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QUEUEING THEORY
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Introduction:
The study of waiting lines, called queuing
theory is one of the oldest and most widely
used Operations Research techniques.
The theory is applicable to situations where
the customers arrive at some service station
(s) for some service; wait (occasionally not);
and then leave the system after getting the
service.
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Examples
Situation Arriving
Customers
Service Facility
Passage of customers
through a supermarket
checkout
Shoppers Checkout Counters
Transfer of electronic
messages
Electronic
Messages
Transmission Lines
Banking Transactions Account
Holders
Bank tellers
Sale of theatre tickets Theatre Goers Ticket booking
Windows
Traffic Signal Vehicles Signal Point
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General Structure Of Queuing System
Input
Population
Arrival
Process
Queue
Queue
Structure
Service System
Service Mechanism
Customers
Leave the
System
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The Elements of a System are:
1. Arrival Process: The arrivals from the input
population may be classified on different
bases as follows:
a. According to source
b. According to numbers
c. According to time

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Service System
There are two aspects of service system:
Structure of the Service System
Speed of Service
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Structure of the Service System
A single service facility:

Arrivals

Queue
Service facility
Customers Leave

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Multiple , Parallel Facilities with
Single Queue
Arrivals

Queue
Service Stations
Customers
Leave
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Multiple, Parallel Facilities with
Multiple Queues
Arrivals
Queues
Service Stations
Customers
Leave
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Service facilities in a Services
Arrivals

Queue
Service Station
Queue
Service Station
Customers
Leave
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Speed of Service
In a queuing system, the speed with which
service is provided can be expressed in either
of two ways:
Service Rate: the number of customers
serviced during a particular time period.
Service Time: the amount of time needed to
service a customer.

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Example:
If a customer can attend, on the average, to
10 customers in an hour, the service rate
would be expressed as 10 customers/hour
and service time would be equal to 6
minutes/customer.
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Queue Structure
Another element of a queuing system is the
queue structure. In the queue structure, the
important thing to know is the queue
discipline which means the order by which
customers are picked up from the waiting
line for service:
a) First-come-first-served
b) Last-come-first-served
c) Service-in-random-order (SIRO)
d) Priority Service
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Operating Characteristics of Queuing
System
Queue length
System length
Waiting time in the queue
Total time in the system
Server idle time

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QUEUING MODELS
Deterministic
Probabilistic
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Deterministic Queuing Models
Customers arrive in the queuing system at
regular intervals and the service time for each
customer is known and constant.
Example: Suppose that customers come to a
banks teller counter every 5 minutes.
Thus, the interval between the arrival of any
two successive customers is exactly 5 mins.
Suppose further that the banker takes exactly
5 minutes to serve a customer.
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Here the arrival and the service rates are
each equal to 12 customers per hour. In this
situation there shall never be a queue.
In this situation there shall never be a queue
and the banker shall always be busy with
work.
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Let the arrival rate be customers per unit time and
service rate is customers per unit time.
Then,
if > the waiting line shall be formed which will
increase indefinitely; the service facility
would always be busy; and the service
system will eventually fail; and
if there shall be no waiting time; the
proportion of time the service facility
would be idle is 1 - /.
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The ratio / = is called the average
utilization, or the traffic intensity, or the
clearing ratio.
If > 1, the system would ultimately fail, and
If 1, the system works and is the
proportion of time it is busy.s
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Probabilistic Queuing Models
a) Poisson exponential, single server model
infinite population.
b) Poisson exponential, single server model
finite population.
c) Poisson exponential, multiple server
model infinite population.
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Poisson Exponential Single Server
Model Infinite Populations
The arrivals follow Poisson distribution, with a
mean arrival rate of, say, .
The service time has exponential distribution.
Let the average service rate be .
Arrivals are from infinite population.
The customers are served on a first-come-
first-served basis.
There is only a single service station.
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The ratio / = indicates the proportion of time, or
probability, that the service station is busy.
Probability that the system is idle, that is there are no
customers in the system, equals
Probability of having only one customer in the
system is


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Poisson-exponential Single Server
Model
Input population is finite.
There are a total of M customers: a customer
is either in the system or outside the system
and, in a sense arriving.
When there are n customers in the system,
then there are M n customers in the arriving
state.
The total average rate of arrivals in the
system is (M - n).

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