Queueing Networks

Abstract

The application of queueing theory often involves several queueing processes connected to one another as departures from one process become arrivals to another process. For example, if a bank were to be modeled, some customers from the “New Accounts” desk might go next to a teller line or to the safety deposit room. Or if the Panama Canal were to be simulated, each of the three locks would have to be modeled as a queueing process with customers (i.e., ships) flowing from one lock to another or from the entrance of the canal to a lock. Many manufacturing systems and supply chains can be modeled as a complex queueing network in which output from one process flows to other queueing processes, sometimes with probabilistic routing and sometimes with deterministic routing.