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TECHNICAL NOTE—Queueing Systems with Synergistic...
Journal article

TECHNICAL NOTE—Queueing Systems with Synergistic Servers

Abstract

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, to achieve the best possible system throughput. We show that when there is no trade-off between server synergy and servers' special skills (because the servers are generalists who are equally skilled at all tasks), the optimal policy has servers working in teams of two or more at all times. Moreover, for Markovian systems with two stations and two servers, we provide a complete characterization of the optimal policy and show that, depending on how well the servers work together, the optimal policy either takes full advantage of servers' special skills, or full advantage of server synergy (and hence there is no middle ground in this case). Finally, for a class of larger Markovian systems, we provide sufficient conditions that guarantee that the optimal policy should take full advantage of server synergy at all times.

Authors

Andradóttir S; Ayhan H; Down DG

Journal

Operations Research, Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 772–780

Publisher

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)

Publication Date

May 1, 2011

DOI

10.1287/opre.1110.0934

ISSN

0030-364X

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