Exam 24: Management of Waiting Lines

A bank is designing a new branch office and needs to determine how much driveway space to allow for cars waiting for drive-up teller service. The drive-up service will have three tellers and a single waiting line. At another branch of the bank in a similar setting, the average service time for drive-up tellers is four minutes per customer, and average arrival rate is 36 customers per hour. It is expected that the new bank will have similar characteristics. How many spaces should be provided to have a 96 percent probability of accommodating all of the waiting cars?

Which of the following is not generally considered to be a measure of system performance in a queuing analysis?

A system has one service facility that can service 10 customers per hour. The customers arrive at a variable rate, which averages six per hour. Since there is excess capacity, no waiting lines will form.

The point that minimizes total queuing system costs is that point where waiting costs and capacity costs are equal.

The queuing models discussed in the text apply only to steady-state conditions. Steady state exists only when customers arrive at a steady rate; that is, without any variability.

A restaurant at a popular Colorado casino provides priority service to player's card holders. The restaurant has 10 tables or booths where customers may be seated. The service time (time a booth or table is occupied) averages 42 minutes once a party is seated. The customer arrival rate is 8 parties per hour, with the parties being equally divided between card holders and people without player's cards. On average, how much longer do parties without player's cards spend in the system, compared to parties with the player's cards?

According to Little's law, the number of people in line depends on the time of day that they arrive.

When the waiting cost incurred likely varies based on some customer characteristic, an appropriate queuing model is:

A restaurant at a popular Colorado casino provides priority service to player's card holders. The restaurant has 10 tables or booths where customers may be seated. The service time (time a booth or table is occupied) averages 42 minutes once a party is seated. The customer arrival rate is 8 parties per hour, with the parties being equally divided between card holders and people without player's cards. What is the average time that player's card holders wait to be seated?

In an infinite-source model, the average number being served is equal to the ratio of the arrival rate to the service rate.

A single-phase queuing system is one which has a single:

A bank of 10 machines requires regular periodic service. Machine running time and service time are both exponential. Machines run for an average of 44 minutes between service requirements, and service time averages six minutes per machine. What is the average machine downtime with two operators?

To reduce the average number waiting in line, it is important to increase utilization.

Queue discipline requires a security presence to maintain order.

All infinite-source queuing models require the system utilization to be less than 1.0.

A single-server, variable-service-time system is known as an M/D/1 system.

If a firm has reached the point at which further reducing waiting time is not economically feasible, reducing the ______________ is sometimes attractive.

A single-phase queuing system in which each arriving customer will be served by a three-member crew has four crews with three members each. The number of "servers" is:

Which of the following would reduce perceived waiting times most dramatically in a doctor's office?

The value of standardizing some or all of a service is demonstrated by the shorter wait times observed in models with: