Question

Harris Teeter is a small local grocery store with one checkout counter. Shoppers arrive at the checkout lane at an average rate of 19 customers per hour, and the average order takes two minutes to ring up and bag. If the manager does not want the average time waiting for service to exceed five minutes, what would you tell them about the current system? Use the Single Server Queue Excel template to answer this question.

Answer 1

The manager can be confident that the current system is meeting his or her requirements.

What is the value?

The current system is meeting the manager's requirement of an average waiting time of no more than 5 minutes.

Here is a table summarizing the data:

Average arrival rate 19 customers per hour

Average service rate 1/2 customers per minute

Average waiting time 3.45 minutes

Maximum waiting time 5 minutes

If the manager is concerned about the average waiting time, they could consider adding more checkout counters or hiring more cashiers. However, this would only be necessary if the average waiting time starts to exceed the maximum waiting time.