Please scroll down for Practice Problems followed by solutions.

Please scroll further down for a brief explanation of the math behind wait time computations.
0.7
A Model for Computing Waiting Time in a Single Station Line: Queueing Model
0.6 62.2714489
Enter Inputs here: 10 62.2714489 99.63431824
0.5
Arrival rate= 9.99 Express it in numbers per time-unit 11 0.420341016 0.672545625
Capacity of one resource (service rate)= 1 Express it in numbers per time-unit. Use same time-units as in arrival rate 12 0.13907193 0.222515089
Number of resources= 10 Resources work in parallel, on separate units of flow. 0.4 13 0.058915632 0.094265011
For your inputs to be valid, Utilization below must be strictly less than 1. 14 0.02697601 0.043161617
Utilization= 0.999 =Arrival Rate / (Capacity of one resource * Number of resources) 0.3 15 0.012643538 0.02022966
16 0.005917995 0.009468792
Coefficient of variation of arrivals Ca= 1 =standard deviation / mean of interarrival times 0.2 17 0.002729857 0.004367771
Coefficient of variation of service Cs= 0.5 =standard deviation / mean of task times 18 0.001231414 0.001970263
If not given, use 1 for both coefficients of arrivals. 1 is "medium" variability. 0.1 19 0.000540673 0.000865077
Poisson arrivals mean Ca=1; Exponential service means Cs=1. 20 0.000230413 0.00036866
0
Read Outputs here: 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Waiting Time= 62.2714489 Time-units are the same as used in rate inputs
Service Time= 1 = 1 / (Capacity of one resource)
Total lead time= 63.2714489 Sum of Wait & Service times. Also called time-in-system

Number in waiting line= 622.0917745 =Arrival rate * Wait time. An application of Little's law
Number in system= 632.0817745 =Arrival rate * Time-in-System. An application of Little's law
"System" refers to both waiting area and service area together.

Practice (see solutions below):

Question 1.
A small town with one hospital has two ambulances to supply ambulance service. Requests for ambulances during non-holiday weekend averages 0.8 per hour.
Travel and assistance time averages one hour per call . How long will a request have to wait for ambulances?

Question 2.
At a bank’s ATM location with a single machine, customers arrive at the rate of one every other minute. Each customer spends an average of 90 seconds completing his/her transactions.
Determine the average time customers spend from arriving to leaving.

Question 3.
The last two things that are done before a car is completed are engine marriage (station 1) and tire installation (station 2). On average 54 cars per hour arrive at the beginning of these two stations.
Three servers are available for engine marriage. Engine marriage requires 3 minutes. The next stage is a single server tire installation. Tire installation requires 1 minute.
How long does a car spend waiting at the final two stations?

Question 4.
What happens to the the wait time if we are given that the Standard deviation of task time at Tire installation station in the previous question is 0.9 minutes?
Recall that the average task time at tire installation was 1 minute.

Question 5.
Consider a queue with a single server, arrival rate of 5 per hour and service rate of 10 per hour.
Actual measurements show that interarrival time standard deviation is 24 minutes and service time standard deviation is 3 minutes. What is the waiting time in queue?

Practice questions with solutions:

Question 1.
A small town with one hospital has two ambulances to supply ambulance service. Requests for ambulances during non-holiday weekend averages 0.8 per hour.
Travel and assistance time averages one hour per call . How long will a request have to wait for ambulances?

Enter Inputs here:

Arrival rate= 0.8
Capacity of one resource= 1
Number of resources= 2

Utilization= 0.4

Coefficient of variation of arrivals Ca= 1

Coefficient of variation of service Cs= 1

Read Outputs here:

Waiting Time= 0.19047619 hours is the Answer
Service Time= 1
Total lead time= 1.19047619

Number in waiting line= 0.152380952

Number in system= 0.952380952

Question 2.
At a bank’s ATM location with a single machine, customers arrive at the rate of one every other minute. Each customer spends an average of 90 seconds completing his/her transactions.
Determine the average time customers spend from arriving to leaving.

Enter Inputs here:

Arrival rate= 0.5
Capacity of one resource= 0.666666667
Number of resources= 1

Utilization= 0.75

Coefficient of variation of arrivals Ca= 1

Coefficient of variation of service Cs= 1

Read Outputs here:

Waiting Time= 4.5
Service Time= 1.5
Total lead time= 6 minutes is the Answer

Number in waiting line= 2.25

Number in system= 3

Question 3.
The last two things that are done before a car is completed are engine marriage (station 1) and tire installation (station 2). On average 54 cars per hour arrive at the beginning of these two stations.
Three servers are available for engine marriage. Engine marriage requires 3 minutes. The next stage is a single server tire installation. Tire installation requires 1 minute.
How long does a car spend waiting at the final two stations?

Engine Marriage Station Tire Installation Station

Enter Inputs here: Enter Inputs here:
Arrival rate= 54 Arrival rate= 54
Capacity of one resource= 20 Capacity of one resource= 60
Number of resources= 3 Number of resources= 1

Utilization= 0.9 Utilization= 0.9

Coefficient of variation of arrivals Ca= 1 Coefficient of variation of arrivals Ca= 1

Coefficient of variation of service Cs= 1 Coefficient of variation of service Cs= 1

Read Outputs here: Read Outputs here:

Waiting Time= 0.136176837 hour wait at Engine Marriage Waiting Time= 0.15 hour wait at Tire Installation
Service Time= 0.05 Service Time= 0.016666667
Total lead time= 0.186176837 Total lead time= 0.166666667

Number in waiting line= 7.353549191 Number in waiting line= 8.1

Number in system= 10.05354919 Number in system= 9

Total Wait time at both stations combined = 0.136+0.15=0.286 hours

Question 4.
What happens to the the wait time if we are given that the Standard deviation of task time at Tire installation station in the previous question is 0.9 minutes?
Recall that the average task time at tire installation was 1 minute.

Enter Inputs here:

Arrival rate= 54
Capacity of one resource= 60
Number of resources= 1

Wait time at Engine marriage remain the same Utilization= 0.9

Wait time at tire installation goes down.

Coefficient of variation of arrivals Ca= 1

Coefficient of variation of service Cs= 0.9 = std.dev / average = 0.9/1

Read Outputs here:

Waiting Time= 0.13575 hour wait at Tire Installation
Service Time= 0.016666667
Total lead time= 0.152416667

Number in waiting line= 7.3305

Number in system= 8.2305

Question 5.
Consider a queue with a single server, arrival rate of 5 per hour and service rate of 10 per hour.
Actual measurements show that interarrival time standard deviation is 24 minutes and service time standard deviation is 3 minutes. What is the waiting time in queue?

Enter Inputs here:

Arrival rate= 5
Capacity of one resource= 10
Number of resources= 1

Utilization= 0.5

Coefficient of variation of arrivals Ca= 2 = 24/12 where 12 minutes is average interarrival time. [60/5=12]
Coefficient of variation of service Cs= 0.5 =3/6 where 6 minutes is average task time. [60/10=6]

Read Outputs here:

Waiting Time= 0.2125 hours is the answer.
Service Time= 0.1
Total lead time= 0.3125

Number in waiting line= 1.0625

Number in system= 1.5625

A Brief Review of the Math behind Wait Time Computations in the Queueing Model.

The method is called Markov Chain Analysis.

A Markov chain defines states of the system and the transition probabilities between the states.

In the case of a single server queue with Poisson arrivals and exponential seervice,
a state is defined as the number of units in the system and
transitions are defined as rates of events that increase that nuber or decrease that number.

The unknown variables are probability of a state that is the chance that system has n units: Pn.
This is how transition between two states looks like:

Markov chain theory tells us that in this situation, the transitions across an imaginary barrier
between two states must be equal:

 P2   P3
We can set up such equations between all states and solve this system of equations to
express Pn as functions of P0. Finally, using the fact that all probabilities must sum to 1,
we can compute all Pn.

After that the average number in waiting is just =1*P2 + 2*P3+….

This gives the following formula for average number-in-waiting Lq:

where M is number of servers.

From here, Little's Law gives average wait time.

When the assumption of Poisson arrivals and exponential service does not hold,
an approximate multiplier is used to estimate the wait time.

Read more at: http://cs.gmu.edu/~huangyih/756/queueing.pdf

 A B C D E G H
1 Template for the M/M/s Queueing Model
2
3 Data Results
4  9.99 (mean arrival rate) L = 1005.33683918
5  1 (mean service rate) Lq = 995.346839182
6 m= 10 (# servers)
7 W = 100.634318236
8 Pr(Ws > t) = 0.99818965 Wq = 99.6343182365
9 when t = 0.38333333
10 r 0.999
11 Prob(Wq > t) = 0.9864294
12 when t = 1 n Pn
13 0 3.6518851E-07
14 1 3.6482332E-06
Probability

0.0012
15 2 1.8222925E-05
16 0.001 3 6.068234E-05
17 0.0008 4 0.0001515541
18 0.0006 5 0.0003028052
19 0.0004
6 0.0005041706
20 7 0.0007195235
0.0002
21 8 0.000898505
0
22 9 0.0009973405
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Number
8 9 10of Customers
11 12 13 in
14System
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
23 10 0.0009963432
24 11 0.0009953468
25 12 0.0009943515
26 13 0.0009933571
27 14 0.0009923638
28 15 0.0009913714
29 16 0.00099038
30 17 0.0009893897
31 18 0.0009884003
32 19 0.0009874119
33 20 0.0009864245
34 21 0.000985438
35 22 0.0009844526
36 23 0.0009834682
37 24 0.0009824847
38 25 0.0009815022