Background:
The COVID testing station at the Bradenton Convention Center provides walk-in testing service for the COVID virus. Depending on the news of the day, there are typically several hundred residents that may expect to get tested. During their operating hours, residents arrive and line up in a single line- standing more or less six feet apart. Usually residents arrive to take the COVID tests every 5 minutes with a standard deviation of three minutes. the COVID tests are done in a single line with a single test.
The testing process isn’t very involved- but is staffed at any one time with a single worker at a single workstation. On average, the time to process the paperwork and to administer the test is two minutes with a standard deviation of two minutes.
The Testing Station manager has been asked to report on some operating characteristics of the testing system noted below and has asked you to calculate and evaluate. For each, be sure to show your formula, using the standand notation of the queueing systems from the chapter- and describing the measure.
a) Given the scenario above, what is the average wait before a resident can get a COVID test? What would be the average time a resident could expect spend in both the waiting and testing portion of the process.
b) At any given time, what percentage of time is the COVID testing station busy? Not busy?
c) Given your calculations in a and b above, the manager is considering adding a second testing and processing to reduce the wait and time a resident needs to get tested and be on their way. Describe the new system that would now have a single line and two serving stations. What would you need to do to recalculate the wait and service times of the revised system.
