I.

Present System Shoppers Market Incorporated is a small well-known grocery store that is open daily from 8am to 5pm. There is only one checkout counter present in the system comprising of a cashier and a bagger. Previous studies indicate that customers arrive at random times from 1 to 8 minutes apart. It is assumed that inter-arrival times are integervalued with each of the 8 values having equal probability. The service times range from 1 to 6 minutes, also assumed to be integer valued, with the 6 values having different probabilities. The probabilities for inter-arrival time and service time are given in tables 1 and 2 respectively.

Table 1: Distribution of Time between Arrivals

Time between Arrival 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Probability .125 .125 .125 .125 .125 .125 .125 .125 Cumulative Probability .125 .250 .375 .500 .625 .750 .875 1.000 Random Digit Assignment 0.00-124 125-249 250-374 375-499 500-624 625-749 750-874 875-999

Table 2: Service-Time Distribution Service Cumulative Time Probability Probability 1 2 3 4 5 6 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.25 0.10 0.05 0.10 0.30 0.60 0.85 0.95 1.00

Random Digit Assignment 0-9 10-29 30-59 60-84 85-94 95-100

When the Shoppers Mart opens, customers would come in and take a basket to place in the goods that they will buy. They browse the aisle and once they have picked all the goods that they will buy, the customers would head straight to the counter. The time consumed for the customers task described above is the inter-arrival time. The interarrival time is the time that the customers arrive at the checkout counter after browsing through the aisle in the store. Once the customers reach the checkout counter, there are two likely possibilities. If there is a customer that came to the checkout counter before him, he will have to wait his turn. The occurrence of the customer waiting his turn will be the waiting time of the customers and that will result into a queue. If there is none, he will instantly be served at the counter. In the checkout counter, the cashier will take the goods

and scan it to the computer. While doing so, she passes the scanned goods to the bagger. The bagger will be the one who bags the goods in a paper bag. After all the goods are scanned, the cashier presents the total amount owed, takes the money from the customer and gives him his change. The task presented by the cashier and the bagger will be the service time. The service time is the amount of time that a customer is being serviced at the checkout counter. After receiving his change, the customer then takes the bagged goods and goes on his way.

Customers arrive at Shoppers Mart Get Basket and look through the aisle

Goes to the checkout counter

Customer wait in the Queue

No

Counter busy with another server?

Yes

Customer enters service

Server scans and bags goods

Server takes cash and gives the customer his change

Customer Departs from Shoppers Mart

Figure 1: Flowchart of Present System

II.

Problem Statement

During the end of the day, at the last hour, customers would pile up in the queue and would eventually exceed more than two people. As a result, the time that the store will officially close goes beyond 5 pm.

Customers in Queue
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1 11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101 111 121 Number of Customers

Customers in Queue

Figure 2: Number of Customers in Queue It can be seen in the figure that in the earlier hours of operation, no queue has gone above two people. It was only during the last hour that the number of people suddenly increased in the queue and has kept increasing until it reached closing time. By that time, no customer will be allowed to go in and the counter will only serve the remaining in line.

III.

Objectives

The general objective of the experiment is to give recommendations on how to respond to the increasing people in the queue during the late operating hours of the store. To do so, there is a need to look for the drivers that affect waiting time of customers and the number of customers in the queue.

IV.

Assumptions

1. 8am will be time 0 minutes in the simulation dock and 5pm will be time 540 minutes wherein no other customer can get in the store after that time. 2. When the store opens, there will already be a customer(s) present. 3. The first customer will start at time 0 4. The store will close after all the customers in the queue are served. 5. The server is designed not to break down. 6. No customer will leave the queue once they are there 7. The allowable number of customers in the queue is two customers per queue.

V.

Scope and Limitation

The simulation will focus on the time that a customer reaches the checkout counter and the time a customer goes out of the checkout counter. It will also be focused on the time when the store will have queues of customers and on how many people are present in the queues.

VI.

Simulation Flowchart
Arrival Event occurs at CLOCK = t

Is CLOCK = t <=540 min?

Is Q > 0?

End

Generate new customer number n=n+1 where at t = 0, n = 0.

Finish serving customers.

Generate random number for Inter Arrival Time and Service Time

Determine Inter Arrival Time (a) and Service Time (s)

Legend: t = Current CLOCK time n = Customer Number a = Inter Arrival Time s = Service Time A = Arrival Time SB = Service Begins SE = Service Ends W = Waiting Time of Customer I Idle Time of Server

Schedule Time Arrived at time A=t+a

Is An > SE(n-1)?

Shcedule next SBn = An

Generate SEn = SB + s

Generate waiting time W = SB - A

Generate Idle time of Server I = SBn - SE(n-1)

Schedule next SBn = SE(n-1)

Generate customers in queue (Q)

Figure 3: Simulation Flow Chart

The simulation starts with knowing the arrival time t. At the start of the simulation, it was assumed that the simulation clock starts at time 0 therefore at the start, t = 0. After that, the program asks if time t exceeds the allowable arrival time which is at t = 540. If time t exceeds 540, it will end there and will finish the remaining customers in the queue if there are any. If the time t did not exceed the limit, the simulation will continue. Knowing that the time did not exceed, it generates a new customer number (n) by adding 1 to the old customer number (n). Then, it will generate a new random number for Inter Arrival Time (a) and Service time (s). The program will show the generated time it takes for a customer to arrive at the system and the time it takes the servers to serve a customer. In scheduling the new time for a service to begin, it asks if the arrival time is larger than the time it took to end the service of the previous customer. If the arrival time is larger, then the value of the latter will be the new service begins (SB). Otherwise, it will be the value of the Service End (SE) of the previous customer. The next step is to generate the waiting time of the customer by subtracting the current time for beginning the service with the current arrival time. It will also generate the idle time of the server by subtracting the current customers SB with the previous customers SE. Then it will generate the value of SE of the current customer by taking the sum of SE and s. After this, the program will loop back to step 1.

VII.

Discussion Table 3: Summary of Simulation (selected variables)

Hour of the Day

Number of Customers

Number of times server is busy with a customer

Service Time

Idle Time

Utilization of Server

8am to 9am 9am to 10am 10am to 11am 11am to 12pm 12pm to 1pm 1pm to 2pm 2pm to3pm 3pm to 4pm 4pm to 5pm Total

11 10 13 14 13 15 16 11 26 129

4 1 7 7 5 12 12 3 24 75

31 37 39 43 39 53 50 26 85 335

29 23 18 15 26 9 10 23 4 157

6.45% 37.84% 53.85% 65.12% 33.33% 83.02% 80% 11.54% 95.29% -

The table above gives some information about the results of the simulation on a per hourly basis of operations in the store. From the table, notice that there are more customers coming in the store during the afternoon rather than in the morning. The most critical times during the day are in the afternoon as shown by The Number of times server is busy with a customer (column 3) of Table 3. This shows customers come in the afternoon more frequently than in the morning. For example, at the last hour, 24 out 26 customers had to wait in line before the counter served them. Only two of the customers that came in that hour did not have to wait in line. From 9am to 10am, only one customer had to wait in line. The other nine did not have to since no one was in the counter when they arrived. For the servers, it also shows that during the afternoon, they were not that very idle. It was only during 3pm to 4pm that they had a large amount of idle time. At the last column, it shows that the counter was utilized more during the afternoon rather than in the morning. By dividing the time when they were not idle by the whole service time at that hour, we were able to generate the percent utilization.

The table below shows a relationship between the customer waiting time and the customers in the queue.

Waiting Time vs Customers in Queue

Customers in Queue 20 Waiting Time 15 Waiting Time 10 5 0 1 14 27 40 53 66 79 92 105 118 Customers in Queue 20 15

Customer's in Queue vs Service Time

Service Time 10 5 0 Customers in Queue

Figure 4: Waiting Time vs. Customers in Queue

It can be seen in Figure 4 that waiting time has a direct relationship with the customers in queue. Every time the customers in the queue increase, so does their waiting time increase. Generally, the only way to decrease the customers in the queue is to decrease their waiting time and to do that, the customers need to be served. Looking at Figure 5, the customers in queue also has a direct relationship with the service time. Every time the service time increases, so does the customers in the queue. Therefore, it can be said that the service time is a driving force for the customers in queue. The logic here would be longer service time results to more customers in queue.

1 14 27 40 53 66 79 92 105 118

Figure 5: Customers in Queue vs. Service Time

Waiting Time vs. Inter Arrival Time

20 Waiting Time 15 10 5 0 Inter Arrival Time Waiting Time

For Figure 6, since the service time and customers in queue was found to have a direct relationship, the inter arrival time should also be considered. Looking at the figure, waiting time would decrease when the inter arrival time increases as seen in the first part of the graph. As the hours go by, the inter arrival time of the customers goes down meaning customers are coming to the checkout counter at a faster rate and obviously, the waiting time of the customers increased drastically. Therefore, the inter arrival time is inversely proportional to the waiting time of the customers and as such is also inversely proportional to the number of customers in queue since the latter is directly proportional to the waiting time.

Looking at this analysis, there is nothing that the store can do with the inter arrival time since it is an exogenous event. Only the service time can help in reducing the number of customers in the queue, which is an endogenous event.

1 11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101 111 121

Figure 6: Waiting Time vs. Inter Arrival Time

Waiting Time vs Idle Service Time

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1 10 19 28 37 46 55 64 73 82 91 100 109 118 127

Waiting Time

Waiting Time Idle Time of Server

Figure 7: Waiting Time vs. Idle Service Time

In Figure 7, it is seen that when idle time is 0, the servers are busy. The graph shows that if the server is idle the waiting time of the customer is low or 0. At the early hours of operation, the idle time of servers is high, reaching to 6 minutes. This shows that the inter arrival time of the customers, as discussed earlier from Figure 6, is not that close to each other. As a result, the waiting time of the customers is 0 since there are no other customers who came before them. However, at the point 118, the servers idle time became zero all throughout and so the waiting time increased drastically. As discussed earlier, inter arrival time of the customers is low when waiting time increases and as such the servers idleness is also described to be inversely proportional to the waiting time as the latter increases when the idle time is low.

VIII.

Conclusion

The main point that was taken in this experiment is that the main driving force affecting the customers in the queue is the service time of the checkout counter. Even if the Inter Arrival Time of the customers affects the customers in the queue, there is no way of changing this because it is beyond the control of the management of Shoppers Mart. The experiment also shows that there were more customers in the afternoon than in the morning and during the morning operations, the queue of the customers did not

exceed two people. Therefore, it is recommended to open another server at least in the afternoon operations of the store. Further studies should also be conducted since a 1 day simulation may not be enough to cover this problem. It is recommended to extend the simulation at least 1 week to further grasp the problem.

IX.

Appendix Table for the simulation:

Hour of Customer Random Inter Arrival Time Random Service Service Service Idle Time Waiting Time Customers the Day Number Number Time Arrival Number Time Begins Ends of Server of Customer in Queue 1st hour 1 264 0 0 30 3 0 3 0 0 0 2 804 7 7 50 3 7 10 4 0 0 3 908 8 15 61 4 15 19 5 0 0 4 916 8 23 19 2 23 25 4 0 0 5 906 8 31 65 4 31 35 6 0 0 6 342 3 34 52 3 35 38 0 1 1 7 749 6 40 19 2 40 42 2 0 0 8 858 7 47 2 1 47 48 5 0 0 9 488 4 51 65 4 51 55 3 0 0 10 212 2 53 26 2 55 57 0 2 1 11 445 4 57 53 3 57 60 0 0 0 2nd hour 12 917 8 65 85 5 65 70 5 0 0 13 674 6 71 49 3 71 74 1 0 0 14 255 3 74 94 5 74 79 0 0 0 15 781 7 81 92 5 81 86 2 0 0 16 996 8 89 3 1 89 90 3 0 0 17 384 4 93 23 2 93 95 3 0 0 18 430 4 97 41 3 97 100 2 0 0 19 514 5 102 96 6 102 108 2 0 0 20 919 8 110 82 4 110 114 2 0 0 21 769 7 117 58 3 117 120 3 0 0

9th hour

104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130

124 93 67 286 670 194 776 163 117 27 535 25 912 227 50 101 469 23 270 340 206 319 57 700 459 48 829

1 1 1 3 6 2 7 2 1 1 5 1 8 2 1 1 4 1 3 3 2 3 1 6 4 1 7

470 471 472 475 481 483 490 492 493 494 499 500 508 510 511 512 516 517 520 523 525 528 529 535 539 540 547

48 70 60 0 62 8 77 19 56 6 63 25 75 93 17 92 38 95 79 58 25 38 82 97 58 24 -

3 4 4 1 4 1 4 2 3 1 4 2 4 5 2 5 3 6 4 3 2 3 4 6 3 2 -

471 474 478 482 483 487 490 494 496 499 500 504 508 512 517 519 524 527 533 537 540 542 545 549 555 558 -

474 478 482 483 487 488 494 496 499 500 504 506 512 517 519 524 527 533 537 540 542 545 549 555 558 560 -

0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -

1 3 6 7 2 4 0 2 3 5 1 4 0 2 6 7 8 10 13 14 15 14 16 14 16 18 -

1 1 2 2 2 1 0 1 2 2 1 1 0 1 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 6