Introduction
Operations Research deals with the resolution of problems related to the conduct and coordination of operations or activities within an organization. Its scope of application is very wide, applying to problems of manufacturing, transportation, construction, telecommunications, financial planning and management, health sciences, public and private services, etc.
In general, it can be applied in all problems related to management, planning and design. Operations Research includes a very broad set of techniques aimed at providing quantitative decision-making aid, and models are frequently used to address a wide variety of real-life problems in engineering and social sciences, which has allowed companies and organizations significant benefits and savings associated with its use. The method used is the scientific method, and the techniques used are largely mathematical techniques. Although the pace of development of new techniques in Operations Research has slowed over time, it has increased the areas where it is applied,as well as the magnitudes of the problems that can be solved with the IO methodologies
Abstract
Operations Research is concerned with the resolution of problems related to the conduct and coordination of the operations or activities within an organization. Its scope is broad, applying to problems of manufacturing, transportation, construction, telecommunications, financial planning and management, health sciences, public and private services, etc.
In general, can be applied to all problems related to the management, planning and design. Operations Research includes a broad set of techniques aimed to provide quantitative support decision making models also are often used to address a variety of problems in engineering real nature and social sciences, which has allowed companies and organizations significant benefits and savings associated with its use. The method is the scientific method and the techniques used are largely mathematical techniques. Although the pace of development of new techniques of operations research has decreased over time, has increased the areas where it is applied and the magnitude of the problems that can be solved with the methodologies of Operations Research.
Development
In particular, a queuing system also called queuing theory is one of the methods that has been used in recent days in successful organizations. In daily life, it is common to face situations in which the customer has to wait to receive a service or merchandise; Several examples can be cited; such as paying a supermarket bill, waiting at the gas station to receive fuel, waiting for a shift at the hairdresser or in line at a bank to do a bank procedure, all clear examples of the aforementioned. These cases happen because a business cannot have an unlimited capacity to serve all of its customers, as this would be unaffordable. However, any company that wants to be successful must carefully monitor this aspect,since many of the times one too long in a line to be attended is the cause that the clients prefer to change the company for another one of the competition.
Example: A basic queuing system.
A basic queuing system.
In fact, the leading companies in the field of services, which are the sector that has proliferated in a remarkable way in this beginning of the third millennium, have paid great attention to the waiting lines of customers, as this is an important part of the service itself., to the extent that one of the colors of a good service indicates that the wait in line should not exceed 5 minutes. In fact, there have been important companies such as WALT DISNEY and others that have become experts in handling these types of aspects, so that they move the lines quickly and efficiently both the lines to enter to see a show, and in the parking itself, which is already part of the service of the customer company.
Another example is that of banking companies, which today manage the famous one-line system; that is, a single waiting line with several servers for it, a system that has been approved to reduce customer waiting times and does not represent any problem for its implementation since customers are the people who enter the bank, who are easily You can train them in the single waiting line, which is not the case, for example, in gasoline stations, where customers are cars that are going to load fuel, which would not be easy to form in a single line which is makes a waiting line for each fuel dispenser pump.
The waiting line theory, which is also known as queue theory, began at the beginning of the 20th century with the Danish engineer A. K Erlang who worked in a telephone company in whom he began to study the waiting of customers who requested a call to be taken care of. Later this theory was developed in other parts of the world, recognizing its importance and frequent application in different areas of society.
A waiting line system is defined as a set of clients, servers and an order in which clients are served, being a process of birth-death, where a birth is considered to occur when a client enters the business premises to receive the service and a death occurs when the customer leaves the parking lot after it has been attended.
It is convenient to comment that unlike other models, those of waiting lines are descriptive and not normative since they are not optimization methods, but rather models that seek to describe the operation of a given system by estimating its most important parameters (Bronson, 1992) it is usual that these cases are maintained in a probabilistic and non-deterministic way, since in general the moment in which a client will request a service is not known.
Waiting lines characteristics:
Waiting lines are usually characterized under the Kendall notation system; which is the following:
V = pattern of customer arrivals: which is the frequency of arrival of customers to the business, defined by the time that elapses during the arrival of one customer and the next. This pattern of arrivals can be deterministic or probabilistic, the latter being much more frequent in real life, given the randomness with which customers arrive at service establishments.
W = service pattern: it is the service time, that is, the time a server takes for a client.
X = number of servers:
Y = system capacity: it is the maximum number of clients that can be in business either in the waiting line or being attended. When a business can form its lines taking the part outside its facilities for this purpose, as is the case when the queues extend to the street, it is said that the capacity is infinite.
Z = discipline of the waiting line: it is the order in which customers are served. Most of the time, the order handled is the first to arrive, first to be attended, that is, FIFO (first in first out), first in, first out, according to which the customer who has arrived first is served first. 0 the LIFO (last in first out) also known as a stack that consists of serving first the customer who has arrived last. Although the first is the most common since it is the most fair and synonymous with a good service at the same time.
conclusion
Queuing theory is a very important tool in operations research as its results are applicable in a wide variety of situations such as: business, commerce, industry, engineering, transportation and telecommunications. I conclude that for the best customer service, it is important that it be as optimal as possible to generate trust and loyalty with the customer and he returns home satisfied and therefore the clientele will be maintained for a long time and on the other hand increase business profit.
Bibliography
- Manuel, IJ (2008). Operations research. Mexico. DF: trillas first edition, Thierauf, RJ (2004). Decision making through operations research. Mexico DF: Limusa SA de CV ISBN 9681805, Winston, WL (June 20, 2013). books.google. Retrieved June 2013, from
