DescriptionQueueing theory is one of the main topics in the field of operations research (though there is not enough time to discuss it in the 3H course). It has been applied to service systems (in banks and post offices for instance), manufacturing, road and airline traffic, the telephone network, telephone call centres and computer communications to name just a few areas. The basic scenario is that customers or jobs arrive randomly at some service point, wait until the service they need has been carried out and then leave the system. The purpose of the models is to provide an understanding of how the arrival rate and service time distribution affect queue length and waiting times.The simplest models of single queues can be expressed in terms of discrete state Markov chains which it will be necessary to investigate from the point of view of their stability. Prerequisites2H Probability is necessary.3H Stochastic Processes is not essential but is strongly recommended. ResourcesA good place to start is the recommended text for the Operations Research module, Hillier & Liebermann's Introduction to Operations Research. This book has a short chapter on Markov chains and two chapters on queueing theory. The Markov chains element will be the only point of intersection between this project and the OR course.There are books on queueing theory in section 519.872 and on general stochastic processes in section 519.21 of the library. In particular
There is also a great deal of information available on the web. |
email: Mikhail Menshikov