Question

A florida coastal community experiences a population increase during the winter months, with seasonal residents arriving from northern states and canada. staffing at a local post office is often in a state of change due to the relatively low volume of customers in the summer months and the relatively high volume of customers in the winter months. the service rate of a postal clerk is 0.75 customers per minute. the post office counter has a maximum of three workstations. the target maximum time a customer waits in the system is five minutes. a. for a particular monday morning in november, the anticipated arrival rate is 1.2 customers per minute. what is the recommended staffing for this monday morning?

Answer 1

To maintain the target maximum wait time of five minutes on a Monday morning in November when the arrival rate is 1.2 customers per minute, it is recommended to staff all three workstations at the post office.

Step-by-step explanation:

Given the service rate of a postal clerk is 0.75 customers per minute, and the anticipated arrival rate is 1.2 customers per minute, we need to determine the recommended staffing to ensure that the maximum wait time of five minutes is not exceeded on a particular Monday morning in November. To calculate this, we can compare the service rate with the arrival rate. Since the service rate (the rate at which clerks can process customers) is lower than the arrival rate (the rate at which customers arrive), this would lead to a situation where customers are arriving faster than they can be serviced, hence potentially increasing the wait time.

To keep the queues short enough to maintain the target wait time, we need to have more clerks to handle the incoming customer traffic. In this case, it would be advisable to staff all three workstations to increase the cumulative service rate to 2.25 customers per minute (0.75 customers per minute per clerk × 3 clerks), which is higher than the arrival rate of 1.2 customers per minute, to stay within the target maximum wait time.