Question

A curbside pickup facility at a grocery store takes an average of 3 minutes to fulfill and load a customer's order. On average 6 customers are in the curbside pickup area. What is the average number of customers per hour that are processed in the curbside pickup line? Show calculations. (Use Little's law).

Answer 1

120 customers per hour

Explanation:

You want to know the processing rate in customers per hour if there are an average of 6 customers waiting, and the average service time is 3 minutes.

Little's Law

Little's law relates the average queue depth to the response time and the average throughput:

mean response time = mean number in system / mean throughput

Solving for the throughput, we find ...

throughput = (number in the system)/(response time)

throughput = (6 customers)/(3/60 hours) = 120 customers/hour

The average rate of processing is 120 customers per hour.

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