Modeling Mobile Ticket Dispenser System with Impatient Clerk

Modeling Mobile Ticket Dispenser System with Impatient Clerk

Abstract:

The mobile ticket dispenser system (MTDS) allows customers to remotely draw tickets for service orders anywhere through a mobile handset. In our previous work, the MTDS was applied to the scenario of restaurant, in which both clerks and customers are patient, i.e., once a mobile ticketing (MT) customer remotely draws the ticket, his request can be served by the clerk when the clerk is available no matter when he/she arrives at the restaurant. In this paper, the MTDS is applied to the scenario of post office, in which the customers are patient, but the clerk is impatient since the original ticket drawn by MT customer may be invalid if he/she does not arrives at the post office before his/her turn. In this case, the behavior of the MT customer is the same as the so called in-person ticketing (IPT) customer, who needs to draw a ticket in person when he/she arrive at the service counter. We propose an analytical model to derive the probability that an MT customer misses his turn when he arrives at the post office. A discrete event simulation model is developed to investigate the performance of the predicted time adjustment mechanism for the MTDS. We also use real data collected at a post office to observe the queuing behavior. Our study provides guidelines for arranging the time for an MT customer to arrive at the MTDS server.

Comments are closed.