Question

Burger house sells hamburgers, cheeseburgers, French fries, soft drinks, and milkshakes, as well as a limited number of specialty items and dessert selections. Although Burger house would like to serve each customer immediately, at times more customers arrive than can be handled by the Burger house food service staff. Thus, customers wait in line to place and receive their orders. Suppose that Burger house analyzed data on customer arrivals and concluded that the arrival rate is 45 customers per hour and 1 customer processed per minute.

Compare a multiple-server waiting line system with a shared queue to a multiple-server waiting line system with a dedicated queue for each server. Suppose Burger house establishes two servers but arranges the restaurant layout so that an arriving customer must decide which server's queue to join. Assume that this system equally splits the customer arrivals so that each server sees half of the customers. How does this system compare with the two-server waiting line system with a shared queue? Compare the average number of customers waiting, average number of customers in the system, average waiting time, and average time in the system.

If required, round your answers to four decimal places.

Shared single queue Dedicated queues

Number of customers waiting __   __

Average number of customers in the system __ __

Average waiting time __ minutes __minutes

Average time in the system __minutes __minutes

Answer 1