Service Operations Management

Where m=19

1. Consider a waiting line in a service company where all usual assumptions for a typical
M/M/1 queueing model (e.g. infinite calling population, no impatience) are satisfied.
The average arrival rate of customers is 8 + (m/10) per hour while the average service time
is 4 + (m/20) minutes.
a) Compute the four key operating characteristics of the system: L, Lq, W, Wq.
b) What is the percentage of time that the server is idle?
c) When a customer arrives, what is the probability that he/she will find 2 or more other
customers waiting already in the queue, in addition to the one being served?
d) Compute the proportion of customers that will have to wait more than 15 + (m/10)
minutes in the queue.
e) A customer arrives and finds the server busy with another customer but the queue
empty. Thus the new customer is first in line. What is the probability that this customer will
have to wait in the queue more than 3 + (m/10) minutes?
f) A customer arrives and finds 4 other customers waiting already in the queue, in addition
to the one being served. What is this customer’s expected waiting time in the queue?
g) What is the long-term average number of customers departing from the system (having
been served) per hour?
h) The service company has estimated that the waiting cost of a customer in the queue is 22
- (m/2) € per hour. What is the expected total waiting cost of the system per 8-hour day?
i) The service company considers making the service process more stable. It can replace the
server by another server, such that the service time will follow a Weibull distribution with
the same average time as before but with standard deviation reduced by two minutes.
- Will such a change improve the operation of the queueing system? Explain briefly.
- What will be its effect on the average queue length?
- What will be its effect on the percentage of time that the server is idle?
- What will be its effect on the expected total waiting cost of the system per 8-hour day?

2. The expected times μ and standard deviations σ of the critical path activities of a project
are shown (in days) in the following table.

Activity Α C D E K L
μ 7 10 25 6 14 5
 σ 1 2 3 + (m/10) 1 3 1

a) What is the expected project completion time?

b) What is the probability that the project will be completed in less than 55+m days?