Skip to main content

How to make queues speed up: is first-come first-served efficient?




Three long lines of people form queues to gain entry into a concert. How can the queues speed up so that a person doesn’t have to wait ‘forever’?

First-come first-served is the usual response to long queues. But Danish researchers suggest another way (Quartz, September 7, 2015). Researchers at the University of Southern Denmark published their study in the journal Discussion Papers on Business and Economics.

The Danish researchers think the first-come first-served principle is a ‘curse.’ They think the first-come first-served model makes people arrive early, which means that they wait for a long time. They say it is not a good incentive to get to the queue first.

What would happen if people could line up at any time – i.e. remove the incentive of getting to the queue early? Theoretically the researchers wanted to try a last-come first-served model.

Researchers found that a last-come first served model was more efficient. With this model, people are forced to change their behaviour in order to arrive at the queues at a slower rate. When people who arrived last are served first there is less bottleneck and less congestion in queues.

In another study also published in the journal Discussion Papers on Business and Economics, researchers examined three queuing systems: (1) first-come first-served, (2) last-come first-served, and (3) service-in-random-order from the queue.

To test the three scenarios 144 volunteers were asked to queue according to the three options. The ‘starting’ point was the first-come first-served scenario, and an average waiting time was recorded (scenario 1). When participants were told that they would be served at random from the queue (scenario 3), the average waiting time decreased. The waiting time decreased further under the last-come first-served system (scenario 2) – this was because most people did not want to risk arriving too early only to be served first.

However, when researchers measured how fair participants felt about each of the three queuing systems, the first-come first-served model (scenario 1) was considered to be the fairest system. The last-come first-served system (scenario 2) was regarded as the least fairest system of queuing.

So is it best to fair or best to be efficient? Even when participants were told the results of all three scenarios, they still preferred the traditional first-come first-served method of queuing.

http://qz.com/496525/danish-researchers-have-an-enraging-proposal-to-speed-up-queues-serve-the-last-person-first/


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. ...
1 comment
Read more

The acacia thorn trees of Kenya

There are nearly 800 species of acacia trees in the world, and most don’t have thorns. The famous "whistling thorn tree" and the Umbrella Thorn tree of Kenya are species of acacia that do have thorns, or spines. Giraffes and other herbivores normally eat thorny acacia foliage, but leave the whistling thorn alone. Usually spines are no deterrent to giraffes. Their long tongues are adapted to strip the leaves from the branches despite the thorns. The thorny acacia like dry and hot conditions. The thorns typically occur in pairs and are 5-8 centimetres (2-3 inches) long. Spines can be straight or curved depending on the species. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Suda...
1 comment
Read more

Apes go to the movies - and remember the scenes

Apes remember major events in movies, even after a single viewing. That’s the findings of primate research in Japan (New Scientist, September 17, 2015). Researchers at the Kyoto University in Japan conducted experiments with two species of apes – chimpanzees and bonobo primates – to test their memory and recall. Instead of using food to test memory, they used films. The researchers made two short movies to show to the apes. Fumihiro Kano and his colleague, Satoshi Hirata, starred in the films with another person dressed as an ape. They wanted to have strong dramatic scenes to see if the apes remembered them. In the first 30-second movie the character ape bursts through a door on the right hand side (there is also a door on the left hand side) and attacks the two researchers (characters) 18 seconds after the start. After 24 seconds a human character choses one of two weapons next to each other and launched a revenge attack on the ape. In the second 30-second movie t...
Post a Comment
Read more