MOUNT KENYA UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATICS

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

UNIT NAME: BUSINESS SIMULATION AND MODELLING

UNIT CODE: BIT 3205

NAME:

ADM NO:

SUBMITTED ON 2ND, APRIL 2020.

 1. Define the following terms as used in queuing:
(i) Transient state (2 marks)

A system is said to be in a transient state when a process variable or variables have been

changed and the system has not yet reached a steady state. The time taken for the circuit to
change from one steady state to another steady state is called the transient time

(ii) Service (2 marks)

The ability of the servers to serve the customers at a given time.

(iii) Queue discipline (2 marks)

The queue discipline indicates the order in which members of the queue are selected for service.
It is most frequently assumed that the customers are served on a first come first serve basis. This
is commonly referred to as FIFO (first in, first out) system.

2. Analyze the following queuing systems by describing their various system

properties:
(i) Hospital emergency room (2 marks)

SOLUTION

Customers Servers
Patients Nurses, Beds, Doctors

(ii) Traffic light (2 marks)

Customers Servers
Vehicles or cars Traffic light, Traffic police

3. Simulation doesn’t provide optimal solution. Comment on any three situations when
OR analysts would consider using simulation to solve management
problems(6marks)

SOLUTION
 (i) With simulation, the analyst creates a model of a system that describes some process
involving individual entities such as persons, products or messages.
(ii) Simulation is a versatile problem-solving methodology that involves the abstraction
of a real-life system.
(iii) Instead of building extensive mathematical models by experts, the readily
available simulation software has made it possible to model and analyze
the operation of the system
4. A simple Queue has a mean arrival rate of λ = 4 customers per hour and mean
service rate of μ = 6 customer per hour
(i) Calculate the traffic intensity and analyze the system. (4 marks)

SOLUTION

By definition, the traffic intensity a is the product of the arrival rate λ and the mean holding time
h:

The unit of the traffic intensity a is called erlang (erl)

By little’s formula: traffic of one erlang means that one channel is occupied on average

a = λμ

a=4*6

=24 erlang

Analyzing the system: Means that, 24 channels are occupied on average

(ii) Determine the average time an arrival spends in the system; and the average
time an arrival spends in the queue and hence deduce the average service
time. (6 marks)

SOLUTION

λ = mean number of arrivals per time period

µ = mean number of people or items served per time period

W = average time in the system = 1 = 1/6-4

μ-λ

=½

Wq= average time in the queue

= λ/μ(μ- λ

= 4/6-4)

= 1/3

L= average number in the system

= λ/μ- λ

= 4/6-4

=2

Lq =average number in the queue

= λ2/μ(μ – λ)

= 42/6(6-4)

=4/3

5. “Simulation is typically the process of carrying out sampling experiments on the

models of the system rather than the system itself” explain this statement clearly by
taking some examples (4 marks)

SOLUTION

Simulations are used in many ways. They're used for scientific discovery, to test designs for
safety, to save money, and even to create graphics for movies and video games.
Scientists use simulations all the time. For example, you could input the laws of gravitation into
a computer, and use it to create a 3D simulation of the planets of the solar system orbiting the
Sun. Then you could fire asteroids through the solar system and see what happens. These are the
kinds of simulations that save us a lot of work; years ago, figuring out what would happen would
have required weeks of calculations completed by hand. Simulations are also used in
meteorology to study weather and climate change, but this is an area where modeling is difficult.
Predicting the motions of every particle in the Earth's atmosphere is incredibly hard, and that is
why weather forecasts can be so wrong sometimes.

Simulations are also used by private businesses, especially for safety tests. There's no point in
building a car and then finding out that your design is so unsafe it will never be allowed on the
road. Instead, one of the first steps is to use computer simulations to make sure your design is at
least safe in theory. Car models can be run through all kinds of simulated crashes, and the design
can be improved to fix any problems before an expensive prototype is built.

REFERENCES

Rosenblatt, A., Gravenor, S., Gurvich, I., Van Mieghem, J., & Mutharasan, R. K. (2018). Optimizing
Emergency Room Throughput for Cardiac Telemetry Patients: A Queuing Theory Approach. Circulation:
Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, 11(suppl_1), A5-A5.

Bandi, C., Trichakis, N., & Vayanos, P. (2019). Robust multiclass queuing theory for wait time estimation
in resource allocation systems. Management Science, 65(1), 152-187.

Malipatil, N., Avati, S. I., Vinay, H. N., & Sunil, S. (2020). Application of Queuing Theory to a Toll Plaza-A
Case Study. In Transportation Research (pp. 343-354). Springer, Singapore.