Homework 4 Solution

Questions to be answered on Canvas

1. About 39% of the customers abandon before being served. What is your estimate
of the average patience time (1/) in minutes of customers waiting to be served at
the Genius Bar?

Here are queueing statistics

= 1 per minute
E[S] = 8 minutes
= E[S]-1 = 1/8 = 0.125 per minute
m=5
k = m + waiting spaces = 5 + 20 = 25

We then search for the = 1/[average patience] that provides P(aban) 0.39

INPUTS
m k
1 0.125 5 25 0.1

OUTPUTS
P(block) P(aban) P(serve) r U L Lq W(served) Wq(served)
0.000 0.390 0.610 1.600 0.976 8.780 3.902 12.836 4.836

We find that = 0.1 abandonments per minute obtains P(aban) 0.39, so that average
patience = 1/ = 10 minutes.

2. Given your estimate of average patience time above, on average how many
customers are standing around waiting to be served by a Genius?

Lq = 3.902. On average about 3.9 customers are waiting at any given time.

3. Given your estimate of average patience time, how many Geniuses should the Apple
Store staff at peak times to ensure that the fraction of customers who abandon cut
nearly in half, to about 20%?

INPUTS
m k
1 0.125 7 27 0.1

OUTPUTS
P(block) P(aban) P(serve) r U L Lq W(served) Wq(served)
0.000 0.200 0.800 1.143 0.914 8.400 2.002 10.116 2.116

m = 7 Geniuses are enough to lower the abandonment rate to 20%

Note that, each time you increase the number of Geniuses, m, by one you should also
increase the number of places in the system, k = 20 + m by one as well.
OIDD 642 Analytics for Services

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