waitingline
Waitingline, often equivalent to a queue, is the arrangement of customers, jobs, or items waiting for service or processing in a system. It forms whenever service capacity is limited and demand varies over time, and it is a central subject of queueing theory within operations research.
A waitingline is described by several elements: the arrival process (how entities enter the line, frequently
Common models use Kendall’s notation, such as M/M/1 for a single-server system with Poisson arrivals and exponential
Applications span retail, call centers, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation. Management strategies include staffing, appointment systems, virtual
Limitations arise from simplifying assumptions (independent arrivals and services, stationary processes) and sensitivity to distributional assumptions.