TECHNICAL NOTE—Queueing Systems with Synergistic Servers

We consider tandem lines with finite buffers and flexible, heterogeneous servers that are synergistic in that they work more effectively in teams than on their own. Our objective is to determine how the servers should be assigned dynamically to tasks in order to maximize the long-run average throughput. In particular, we investigate when it is better to take advantage of synergy among servers, rather than exploiting the servers' special skills, …