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Queueing theory

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Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science

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HISTORY

Queueing theory is the study of service systems with substantial statistical fluctuations in either the arrival or service rates. Other names for the subject are stochastic service systems and the theory of mass storage. An example of a stochastic service system from everyday life is a line for bank tellers (human or automatic); customers arrive at random, and the transaction lengths will vary de-pending on the services requested. An example from the world of technology is a computer system; jobs arrive randomly and require different amounts of system resources. An all-too-common source of service-rate variability is a hardware or software crash, which probably occurs randomly even though it might appear that they happen just when you want to use the computer. Looking inside the computer system reveals some more stochastic-service systems. The components (e.g., disk drives, I/O devices, the CPU) have randomly arriving tasks, and the time required to execute a task may be...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. AT&T Laboratories, Middletown, New Jersey, USA

    Daniel P. Heyman

Authors
  1. Daniel P. Heyman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Part, Maryland, USA

    Saul I. Gass

  2. School of Information Technology & Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    Carl M. Harris

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© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Heyman, D.P. (2001). Queueing theory. In: Gass, S.I., Harris, C.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_847

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_847

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-7827-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-0611-1

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