Worksheet: Queues

1. The typical subway station in Delhi, has six turnstiles, each of which can be controlled
by the station manager to be used for either entrance or exit control—but never for both.
The manager must decide at different times of the day just how many turnstiles to use for
entering passengers and how many to be set up to allow exiting passengers.
At the New Delhi Railway Station Metro station, passengers enter the station at a rate of
about 84 per minute between the hours of 7 and 9 a.m. Passengers exiting trains at the
stop reach the exit turnstile area at a rate of about 48 per minute during the same morning
rush hours. Each turnstile can allow an average of 30 passengers per minute to enter or
exit. Arrival and service times have been thought to follow Poisson and exponential
distributions, respectively. Assume riders form a common queue at both entry and exit
turnstile areas and proceed to the first empty turnstile.
The New Delhi Railway Station Metro Station manager does not want the average
passenger at his station to have to wait in a turnstile line for more than 6 seconds, nor
does he want more than 8 people in any queue at any average time.
(a) How many turnstiles should be opened in each direction every morning?
(b) Discuss the assumptions underlying the solution of this problem using queuing
theory.

2. Customers arrive at Maninder’s bookstore according to a Poisson process at a mean

rate of 48 per hour. The store pays its sales clerks Rs. 75 per hour in wages and benefits.
Maninder’s estimates the goodwill cost of a customer waiting to be served at Rs. 60 per
hour and the goodwill cost of a customer being served at only Rs. 10 per hour. Customer
service times follow an exponential distribution and average 2 minutes.
(a) Determine the number of sales clerks Maninder’s should employ to minimize the
store’s total average hourly costs.
(b) If the customer arrival rate increases by 50% and the goodwill cost of a customer
waiting to be served and being served were doubled, determine how many sales clerks
Maninder’s should employ to minimize the store’s total average hourly costs.

3. Saveway Supermarkets is a major food retailer in Mumbai. The chain has over 60
stores that receive merchandise from their Bhiwandi, warehouse. The warehouse receives
shipments of merchandise throughout the day from the various vendors and
manufacturers with whom Saveway does business.

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The Bhiwandi warehouse has eight loading docks available for delivery of goods. Trucks
arrive at the warehouse approximately once every six minutes according to a Poisson
process. If all the loading docks are occupied, an arriving truck waits in a queue until a
dock becomes available.
Currently, each dock is staffed by a single worker, who unloads a truck in an average of
30 minutes. Saveway management has been getting complaints from some of it suppliers
that their truckers are spending too much time unloading merchandise at the Bhiwandi
warehouse.
Hence Saveway has come up with a number of possible strategies to address this
problem: (1) hire a second worker for each loading dock, reducing the average time to
unload a truck to 18 minutes (workers earn Rs.160 per hour in salary and benefits); (2)
equip each loading dock with an electric forklift that can be leased for Rs.50 per hour and
reduce the time required to unload a truck to an average of 24 minutes; or (3) build up to
two more loading docks (accounting for capital costs, each dock will cost Saveway Rs.60
per hour to build).
While strategies 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive, the firm may decide to implement strategy
3 either alone or in combination with 1 or 2. Saveway estimates the goodwill cost of a
delivery truck being in the system at Rs.600 per hour.
Prepare a business report recommending a course of action to Saveway management
assuming the objective is to minimize total system costs. Assume that service times for
each option follow exponential distributions. Include in your report a comparison of the
system parameters of your recommendation to those of current operations.

4. Burger Queen has a drive-thru window for take-out orders. Because of space limitation,
the restaurant has been designed to allow a maximum of 5 cars in the drive thru window
line (including the car being served). If the line is full, cars will not stop at Burger Queen
but will instead drive to a competing restaurant.
Cars attempt to arrive to Burger Queen’s drive-thru window at an average of one every 80
seconds. Interarrival times are assumed to follow an exponential distribution, service
times also follow an exponential distribution, with a mean service time of one minute.

(a) What is the average number of cars waiting in line for service?
(b) What is the average time a car spends in line, including the service?
(c) What is the probability that there are no cars at the drive-thru window?
(d) Comment on the appropriateness of modelling the service time at Burger Queen by an
exponential distribution.
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