Question 1. Consider the baggage check-in of a small airline. Check-in data indicate that from 9 a.m.

to
10 a.m., 255 passengers checked in. Moreover, based on counting the number of passengers waiting in
line, airport management found that the average number of passengers waiting for check-in was 35.

How long did the average passenger have to wait in line (in minutes)?
Question 2. While driving home for the holidays, you can’t seem to get Little’s Law out of your mind.
The traffic report from the WXPN traffic chopper states that there is an average of 96 cars going in your
direction through the one mile stretch of highway on which you are driving. Moreover, based on the
average speed of the cars you assume that it takes 1 minute for all cars to travel through the same one
mile part of the highway on which you are driving. What is the flow rate of this one-mile stretch of
highway (going in your direction) in cars per hour?
Answer for Question 1:

We use Little’s law to compute the flow time, since we know both the flow rate as well as the inventory
level:

Flow Time = Inventory / Flow Rate = 35 passengers / 255 passengers per hour = 0.137 hours = 8.24
minutes

Answer for Question 2:

We look at the 1 mile of highway as our process.

It takes a car 1 minute to travel through the process (flow time).

There are 96 cars on the 1 mile stretch (inventory).

Inventory = Flow Rate * Flow Time: 96 cars = Flow Rate * 1 minute

Thus, the Flow Rate is 96 cars per minute, corresponding to (96 * 60 =) 5760 cars per hour.