Queuing Theory and its Application: Analysis

of the Sales Checkout Operation in Koala

Mart

By

Mary Anne C. Bantog

BSA-3A

A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements in Quantitative Techniques in Business, a

subject for the degree of Bachelor of Science in

Accountancy

Partido State University

Goa Campus
 Date of Submission: October 04, 2010

Introduction

Queuing Theory

Delays and queuing problems are most common

features not only in our daily-life situations such as at a

bank or postal office, at a ticketing office, in public

transportation or in a traffic jam but also in more

technical environments, such as in manufacturing,

computer networking and telecommunications. They play

an essential role for business process re-engineering

purposes in administrative tasks. “Queuing models

provide the analyst with a powerful tool for designing and

evaluating the performance of queuing systems.” (Bank,

Carson, Nelson & Nicol, 2001)

Whenever customers arrive at a service facility,

some of them have to wait before they receive the

desired service. It means that the customer has to wait

for his/her turn, may be in a line. Customers arrive at a

service facility (sales checkout zone in Koala Mart) with

several queues, each with one server (sales checkout

counter). The customers choose a queue of a server

according to some mechanism (e.g. shortest queue or

shortest workload). (Adan, 2000)

Sometimes, insufficiencies in services also occur due

to an undue wait in service may be because of new

employee. Delays in service jobs beyond their due time

may result in losing future business opportunities.

Queuing theory is the study of waiting in all these

various situations. It uses queuing models to represent

the various types of queuing systems that arise in

practice. The models enable finding an appropriate

balance between the cost of service and the amount of

waiting.
 The aim of studying queuing system analysis is

trying to detect the variability in a quality of service due

to queues in sales checkout operating units, find the

average queue length before getting served in order to

improve the quality of the services where required, and

obtain a sample performance results to obtain time-

dependent solutions for complex queuing models. The

defined model for this kind of situation where a network

of queues is formed is time-dependent and needs careful

observations.

This paper contains the analysis of queuing system

for the empirical data of supermarket checkout service

unit as an example. One of the expected gains from

studying queuing systems is to review the efficiency of

the models in terms of utilization and waiting length,

hence increasing the number of queues so customers will

not have to wait longer when servers are too busy. In

other words, trying to estimate the waiting time and

length of queue is the aim of this research paper. We use

the queuing theory model to obtain the measures of

performance of the queuing system.

This paper describes queuing system analysis for a

multiple-single server process. This study requires an

empirical data which may include data the variables like

arrival time in the queue of servers, departure time,

service time, etc. An observation during peak time is

developed to collect the data for such variables.

This model is developed for a sales checkout

operation in Koala Mart at Goa, Camarines Sur. The

model designed for this example is multiple-single server

models. The model contains three servers which are

checkout sales counters; attached to each server is a

queue. In any service system, a queue forms whenever

current demand exceeds the existing capacity to serve.

This occurs when the checkout operation unit is too busy

to serve the arriving customers immediately.

Results and Findings

This section covers the results and findings found in

the observed data gathered. It includes the parameters

used i.e. the arrival rate, service rate and the number of

servers in identifying the performance measures of the

queuing system, the performance measures of the

system with their respective values and the probabilities

of customers in the system which all covers the main

purpose of these research. The researcher uses QM for

Windows to verify the results obtained.

Parameters (arrival and service rate)

We can find the average arrival rate in unit per

period or the λ and the average service rate in unit per

period (μ) using the observed data. In this model, we use

the second as the basis for the period. Based on the

empirical data gathered, the average arrival rate in unit

per second is 82.52 and the average service rate per

second is 51.82.

It is examined that the arrival rate of 82.52 is greater

than the service rate of 51.82. Thus suggesting that the

service operation is quite satisfactory and waiting line is

longer.

Performance measures based on QM for Windows

We can derive from the parameters obtained above

the performance measures of the queuing system of

Koala Mart. We can observe from the table below that the

traffic time or the utilization rate of the servers is less

than one. This suggests that the service process is quite

slow and work effectively. Another result is the lower

length of customers and time of the queue and the

system.
 Table 1

List of Performance Measures of Queuing System

Performance Val Value Value

Measures ue * 60 *60*60
Average server
.53
utilization
Average number in the
.31
queue (Lq)
Average number in the
1.9
system (Ls)
Average time in the
0 .22 13.37
queue (Wq)
Average time in the
.02 1.38 82.84
system (Ws)

Table 1 show that the average utilization rate per

second is .53, the average number of customer in the

queue per second is .31, the average number of customer

in the system is 1.91, the average time in the queue per

hour is 13.37 and the average time in the system per

hour is 82.84.
Probability that there are zero customers in the
system based on QM for Windows
It is shown in the table below the probabilities that

there will be no customer n the system. We can infer in

the given data the low variations of probabilities of idle

time from the operation thus, revealing the minimal

possibility of waste resource utilization of the system.

Table 2
List of Probabilities of Customers in System
k P0(n=k) P0 (n<=k) P0 (n>k)
0 .18886 .18886 .81114
1 .30075 .48962 .51038
2 .23947 .72908 .27092
3 .12711 .85619 .14381
4 .06747 .92367 .076333
5 .03581 .95948 .04052
6 .01901 .97849 .02151
7 .01009 .98858 .01142
8 .00536 .99394 .00606
9 .00284 .99678 .00322
 10 .00151 .99829 .00171
11 .0008 .99909 .00091
12 .00043 .99952 .00048
13 .00023 .99974 .00026
14 .00012 .99986 .00014

Table 2 reveals the probabilities that there will be no

customer in the system. It is observed that there is a

1.89% chance that 0 customer will be in the system and

8.11% chance that more than 0 customers are in the

system.

Conclusion and Recommendation

The empirical analysis of queuing system of Koala

Mart is that they are quite efficient in terms of resources

utilization. Queues forms and customers wait but the

service flow is still satisfactory. The formation of queue is

a direct consequence of the variability of the arrival and

service processes. If variability could be eliminated,

system could be designed economically so that there

would be little or no waiting, and hence no need for

queuing models.

With the increasing number of customers coming to

Koala Mart for shopping, either usual grocery or for some

house wares, there is a trained employee serving at each

service unit. Sales checkout service has sufficient number

of employees (servers) possibility of short queues in a

model and hence no need to open all checkouts counters

for each hour. Increasing more than sufficient number of

servers may not be the solution to increase the efficiency

of the seffffrvice by each service unit.