A firm tries to improve the waiting process for its customers. They collect the following information: -
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Question:
- On average, 40 customers arrive every hour.
- On average, it takes 5 minutes to serve one customer
- There are 4 employees available for service.
The firm studies 2 options for the design of the waiting space:
I) Making one line for each employee, thus having 4 different waiting lines
II) Placing all customers in one waiting line, and the customer at the front of the line is served by the first employee available.
Assume that the distributions for inter-arrival times and service times are exponential.
a) Which option results in the shortest waiting time in the queue? Motivate your answer.
b) If there is no money available to hire an extra employee, how can the customer waiting process be improved?
Related Book For
Operations and Supply Chain Management
ISBN: 978-0078024023
14th edition
Authors: F. Robert Jacobs, Richard Chase
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