Queueing Models with Behavioural Consideration

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Queueing systems can be found almost everywhere in the world. Many of the queueing systems involve humans. The behaviour of humans has significant impact on the performance of the queueing systems. How to capture and quantify such impact is an issue of interest to the design and operations of such queueing systems. The objective of this research is to investigate queueing systems with behavioural consideration. The research consists of three stages. At the first stage, empirical studies on how humans (customers and/or servers) behave under different queueing circumstances (e.g., long/short queue length or waiting time) will be conducted. The studies will be carried out mainly, in collaboration with Chinese colleagues, at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. At the second stage, analytic models will be developed and investigated. Matrix-analytic methods, stochastic comparison, and simulation, among others, will be utilized in the analysis. Effective and efficient algorithms will be developed for computing performance measures and for finding optimal or heuristic solutions. The last (third) stage will involve the applications of results in the design of systems such as service organizations (e.g., call centre, bank, airport, restaurant, etc.) There have been studies on queueing models with behavioural consideration in the literature. However, human behaviour is assumed to be rational, while it is usually bounded rational. The proposed research will take consideration of the bounded rationality of humans in the introduction and investigation of queueing models. The results are expected to be more suitable for the design of queueing systems where human activities and decisions are involved. The results are also expected to increase the efficiency, productivity, and reliability of those queueing systems.