 Arranging Queues in Series: A Simulation ExperimentS. Suresh and
W. Whitt
Management Science, 1990, vol. 36, issue 9, 1080-1091 Abstract: For given external arrival process and given service-time distributions, the object is to determine the order of infinite-capacity single-server queues in series that minimizes the long-run average sojourn time per customer. We gain additional insight into this queueing design problem, and congestion in non-Markov open queueing networks more generally, by performing simulations for the case of two queues. For this design problem, we conclude that the key issue is variability: The order tends to matter more when the service-time distributions have significantly different variability, and less otherwise. Arranging the queues in order of increasing service-time variability, using the squared coefficient of variation as a partial characterization of variability, seems to be an effective simple design heuristic. Parametric-decomposition approximations seem to provide relatively good quantitative estimates of how much the order matters. Keywords: queueing networks; tandem queues; departure processes; queueing system design; simulation; approximations; parametric-decomposition approximations (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:36:y:1990:i:9:p:1080-1091 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC. |
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