Locating a Mobile Server Queueing Facility on a Tree Network

Samuel S. Chiu, Oded Berman and Richard C. Larson
Additional contact information
Samuel S. Chiu: Engineering and Economic Systems, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
Oded Berman: Faculty of Management, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4
Richard C. Larson: Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Management Science, 1985, vol. 31, issue 6, 764-772

Abstract: This paper extends recent work on finding the stochastic queue median (SQM) on a network. The SQM is the optimal location of a single mobile server, when idle, who travels to customers in response to requests for service. Customer demands are limited to the nodes of the network and their requests for service arrive according to a time homogeneous Poisson process, independently from each node. When a service request finds the server busy with a previous customer, it is entered into an M/G/1 queue that is depleted in a first-in, first-out (FIFO) manner. The SQM is the point on the network at which the sum of mean queueing delay and mean travel time is minimized. In this paper the transportation network is restricted to be a tree. By discovering and exploiting convex properties of the objective function and related functions, an efficient finite-step algorithm is found for locating the SQM on a tree.

Keywords: facilities/equipment; planning:; location (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1985
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.31.6.764 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:31:y:1985:i:6:p:764-772

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().