Queuing Tutorial

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What is Queuing?

Queuing is a process where people, materials or information need to wait at certain time to get a service. Basically queuing means congestion or crowd. Congestion happens when customers must queue up and await their turn to be served. We can generalize the definition of queuing system based on the purpose as a transfer of information, materials, people or things between customers and servers.

We can view queuing as a system, which purpose is to transfer people, materials or information. A system consist of many components. Queuing system consists of customers and servers and the facilities where the customers can queue. The customers may arrive at certain time distribution and certain queuing discipline such as certain prioritization, or first come first serve. The customers may come from certain limited source. The servers that provide services to the customers may have certain service time distribution or certain configuration such as serial or parallel servers. The queuing facilities may involve certain design with limited capacity to reject the customers who arrive after the capacity is reached.

Based on the existence of waiting line, we can categorize a queuing system into two types.

  • Bulk queue is a queuing system where the customers do not form a waiting line. The system requires minimal space but the order of the queuing discipline is unclear or random order. Bulk queue tend to be disorganized. It is often based on muscle strength and the queuing system creates frustration and it may endanger life. There are many evident that stampede happens out of bulk queue formation.

Bulk Queue

  • Waiting line queue is a queuing system where the customers form a waiting line. The order is usually first in first served

Queuing Line

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Preferable reference for this tutorial is

Teknomo, Kardi. (2014) Queuing Theory Tutorial
http://people.revoledu.com/kardi/tutorial/Queuing/