Agan Interior Design provides home and office decorating assistance to its customers. In normal operation, an average of 2.7 customers arrives each hour. One design consultant is available to answer customer questions and make product recommendations. The consultant averages 10 minutes with each customer.
(a) Compute the operating characteristics of the customer waiting line, assuming Poisson arrivals and exponential service times. (Round your answers to four decimal places. Report time in hours.)
=
=
Lq=
L=
Wq=
hW=
hPw=
(b) Service goals dictate that an arriving customer should not wait for service more than an average of 5 minutes. Is this goal being met? (Round your answer to one decimal place.)
Wq (in minutes) =_______ min, which is greater than the desired wait time, so the goal is not met.
What action do you recommend? (Select all that apply.)
a) Increase the mean service rate
b) Increase the hours of operation.
c) Hire another consultant.
d) Decrease the mean service rate.
e) There is no need to change the current operating parameters.
(c) If the consultant can reduce the average time spent per customer to 7 minutes, what is the mean service rate? (Round your answers to four decimal places. Report time in hours.)
= _______
Lq= _______
Wq= _____ h
Will the service goal be met? (Round your answer to one decimal place.)
Wq (in minutes) =__________ min, which is less than the desired wait time, so the goal is met.