SHOPPER’S MARKET INC.

The System:
Shopper’s Market Inc. is a small but well-known grocery store that has only one
checkout counter. It opens daily from 8:00 in the morning to 5:00 in the afternoon. A
systems analyst had gathered data regarding customer arrival to this checkout counter and
found out that they arrive at random from 1 to 8 minutes apart. Each possible value of
interarrival time has the same probability of occurrence as shown in the table below:

Table 1
Distribution of Time Between Arrivals
Time Between Arrivals Probability Cumulative Probability
( Mins. )
1 0.125 0.125
2 0.125 0.250
3 0.125 0.375
4 0.125 0.500
5 0.125 0.625
6 0.125 0.750
7 0.125 0.875
8 0.125 1.000

On the other hand, service times of the checkout counter for each customer vary
from 1 to 6 minutes with the probabilities shown in the table below:

Table 2
Distribution of Counter Service Time
Service Time ( Mins. ) Probability Cumulative Probability
1 0.10 0.10
2 0.20 0.30
3 0.30 0.60
4 0.25 0.85
5 0.10 0.95
6 0.05 1.00

Instructions:
1. Simulate the given system above for a length of one day.
2. You may use the rand function of Excel for this exercise.
3. Prepare 4 replications and perform an output analysis for the given system.
4. Given your results, how many replications are required in order to achieve an error of
+/- 0.05

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SIMSYST: Shopper’s Market Inc.