All airplane passengers at the Lake City Regional Airport must pass through a security screening area before proceeding to the boarding area. The airport has three screening stations available, and the facility manager must decide how many to have open at any particular time. The service rate for processing passengers at each screening station is 3 passengers per minute. On Monday morning the arrival rate is 5.4 passengers per minute. Assume that processing times at each screening station follow an exponential distribution and that arrivals follow a Poisson distribution.
What is the arrival rate? What units is it in?
What is the service times per screening station? What units is it in?
Suppose there are 2 screening stations. What is k?
If the facility manager’s goal is the limit the average number of passengers to 10 or fewer, do you recommend 2 screening stations or 3 screening stations? Why? Think from a business perspective.