An Office that dispenses automotive licenses plates has divided its customer into
categories to level the office workload. Customers arrive and enter one of three lines
based on their residence location. Model this arrival activity as three independent arrival
streams using an exponential interarrival distribution with mean 10 minutes for each
stream, and an arrival at time 0 for each stream. Each customer type is assigned a single,
separate clerk to process the application forms and accept payment, with a separate queue
for each. The service time is UNIF (8,10) minutes for all customer types. After
completion of this step, all customers are sent to a single, second clerk who checks the
forms and issues the plates (this clerk serves all three customer types, who merge into a
single first-come, first-served queue for this clerk). The service time for this activity is
UNIF (2.66, 3.33) minutes for all customer types. Develop a model of this system and
run it for 5,000 minutes, observe the average and maximum time in system for all
customer types combined. Consider first 500 minutes as warm-up period. Run the model
for 5 replications and show graphically the results for single replication and 5
replications.
A consultant has recommended that no need to differentiate customers at the first stage
and use a single line with three clerks who can process any customer type. Develop a
model of this system, run it for 5,000 minutes, and compare the results with those from
the first system.