ITEC 355 Production/Operations Management

IN-CLASS EXERCISE
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IN-CLASS EXERCISE #5: Estimating Delays using Queueing Theory

Guidelines: You will complete this exercise individually.

STUDENT NAME:

Question-1.
(NOTE: Please watch the instructor’s lectures and recorded videos on how to solve queueing
problems before answering this question.)

EagleDiner is a restaurant that operates 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. The restaurant has 6
booths to serve customers (or parties). Once a party is seated to a booth, they complete their
meal (including order taking and payment processing) in an average of 42 minutes. That is, the
booth is occupied by that party for an average of 42 minutes. The arrival rate to the restaurant
is 8 parties per hour. The interarrival and service times are Poisson and exponential distributed,
respectively. The customers wait to be seated if all booths are occupied.
NOTE: SHOW ALL YOUR WORK. USE 3 DECIMAL PLACES IN ALL CALCULATIONS.

a) (1 point) What is the average service rate () to be used in this queueing model?
Answer: 1/42min= 1/42/60 h
=1.43 per hour

b) (1 point) What is the average arrival rate () to be used in this queueing model?
Answer: =8 per hour

c) (1 point) If a party arrives at the restaurant at 1:00pm, what is the expected arrival time of
the next party?
Answer: 1/8 hour= 60/8 minute= 7 minutes and 30 seconds
The expected arrival time of the next party is 1:07:30PM

d) (1 point) How long, on the average, does a party have to wait before being seated? Report
your answer in minutes.
Answer: Wq= Average wait time in the queue= 42 minutes

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 ITEC 355 Production/Operations Management
IN-CLASS EXERCISE
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e) (1 point) What is the probability that all the booths empty (not occupied) at any time?
Answer: P (0): the place could be empty or not occupied at any time=1

f) (1 point) What is the average number of parties being served or waiting to be seated at any
point in time?
Answer: Ls=Ws=Lq+(/)= Wq + /=( 8/60*42)+(8/60 / 1/42)=11.2
g) (1 point) What is the probability that a party will not wait in the queue and will be seated
immediately upon arrival?
Answer:

P (no wait) = P(server idle) = P(0)= 0.3

h) (1 point) What is the average utilization rate of a booth at this restaurant?
Answer: 70%

i) (2 points) Currently, the restaurant is considering a renovation that will increase the
number of booths to 7. Suppose the “delay cost” is $35 per hour per party. You can think of
the delay cost as follows: If a customer spends a long time waiting to be seated and they are
short on time, they are likely to choose quick-serving foods and order fewer items (e.g. skip
dessert) when they are seated. This is lost revenue for the restaurant while the customer is
within the premises. The goal is to recover some of this lost revenue by reducing the
queueing time. How much revenue can the restaurant recover daily by adding the 7 th
booth? Show all your work.

Answer: _____________
8 customers/hour * 24= 192
Having 6 booths: 192/6=32 customers/booth
Having 7 booths: 192/7= 27.429 customers/booth
Consider having $35 delay costs/hr
Then having 7 booths will decrease the delay costs to $30
$35-$30=$5/hour

Question-2.
Read the article “Fixing FastPass: How Disney’s Virtual Queue Was Born, Broken, And Could
Work Again” (link below) and answer the questions below.

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 ITEC 355 Production/Operations Management
IN-CLASS EXERCISE
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https://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20200306/28707/fixing-fastpass-how-disneys-
virtual-queue-was-born-broken-and-could-work

a) (1 point) What was Fastpass? Why was it introduced in 1990s? What was the benefit of
Fastpass to Disney? What was the benefit of Fastpass to theme park visitors?
The fastpass was introduced in the 1990’s because of the long waiting of turns that
Disney land visitors experienced. It is a timed ticket that allows the visitor to spend time at
any station instead of waiting for turn. It was introduced in the 1990s because waiting hit
high gear at that time. It benefited Disney by organizing the waiting lines and entertaining
the visitors. It benefited the theme park visitors since they became a part of it as
international tourists.
b) (1 point) Why did FastPass begin to fail in 2010s?
The FastPass begin to fail in 2010 due to three main problems. The first one is that some lines
where built not to handle massive groups nor to entertain others and this caused the new
generation lines to smash with the old ones. The second problem is that visitors struggled in
having rides, and they were dissatisfied with the high payments compared to their bad
experience. The third problem was that at waiting times and within having all these huge lines,
executives were frustrated because of the loss of opportunities of guest buying snacks, meals,
or souvenirs.