1.3.

Activity scanning 9

Table 1.2: Waiting and system times.

Customer 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8- 9 . 10 11 12 13 14 15
Waiting time 0 0 0 2 4 7 5 6 11 7 2 0 0 2 1
System time 12 10 16 11 14 20 22 16 19 19 16 13 10 14 16

00

-
0=E ig(i),
i=o
where q(i) is the probability that the queue length is i over the total simulation
time. In order to obtain estimates of q(i), we have to sum up all time intervals
during which the waiting line was comprised of i customers. From Table 1.1
we have, for instance, that two customers were waiting for service during the
following intervals: (14 —13), (17 —16), (21 — 19), (24 — 23), (27 — 25), (36 — 30),
which give in total 13 time units. Thus, the average queue length is:

0 1•—15
73 + 2 - — 73 13 + 3 • — 73 = 0.6438.

ATM utilizations. These are probabilities that each machine is busy during the
time it takes to serve 20 customers. Each of them can be determined as a ratio
of the total busy time of the ATM to the total simulation time. The required
numbers can be easily obtained by summing up the service times occurring in
columns ATM-1, ATM-2 and ATM-3 of Table 1.1. For example, for the first
machine, its total utilization time is 12 + 9 + 13 + 8 + 13 + 15 = 70. Thus, the
requested probability is given by 70/73 = 0.96. In a similar fashion, one can
compute the remaining two probabilities, which are 0.71 and 0.81, respectively.
It has to be emphasized that the quantities obtained from this example
simulation run are only rough estimates of the actual performance measures
of the bank ATM center. In order to increase the accuracy of these findings,
usually a much longer simulation experiments would be needed. The problems
related to design and conduction of such experiments will be the subject of
thorough analysis in Chapters 6 and 7.

1.3 Activity scanning

We are now ready to learn the first simulation technique which is particularly
easy to program. It is called the activity-scanning approach and offers the con-
venience of not having to worry about the global picture of simulated systems
due to the absence of explicit handling of interactions between events. In every

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