The performance of single-server queues with independent interarrival intervals and service demands is well understood, and often analytically tractable. In particular, the M/M/1 queue has been thoroughly studied, due to its analytical tractability. Little is known, though, when autocorrelation...

This paper provides the expected waiting time of a nonsymmetric cyclic server queueing system with Poisson traffic, arbitrary switchover and arbitrary service times. For n the number of queues, the expected waiting time is obtained using n equations which is a significant improvement over the...

Sarkar and Zangwill (1991) showed by numerical examples that reduction in setup times can, surprisingly, actually increase work in process in some cyclic production systems (that is, reduction in switchover times can increase waiting times in some polling models). We present, for polling models...

In the early 1990s, research began to show that the Japanese production theory, which espouses reduction of machine setup time as a sure way to improve production performance, may be limited. Specifically, it was found that reduction in mean setup times without any change in variance can,...

Many countries of the world are now promoting themselves as international medical centres and attracting patients from across the globe. With competition in medical tourism intensifying further, India must conquer a share of the international medical services market to stay in the competition....

This paper reviews the impact of health policies on hospital waiting times in the Netherlands over the last two decades. During the 1990s hospital waiting times increased as a result of the introduction of fixed budgets and capacity constraints for specialists, in addition to the fixed global...

In countries with publicly financed health care systems, waiting time—rather than price—is the rationing mechanism for access to health care services. The normative statement underlying such a rationing device is that patients should wait according to need and irrespective of socioeconomic...

Waiting times for elective surgery, like hip replacement, are often referred to as an equitable rationing mechanism in publicly-funded healthcare systems because access to care is not based on socioeconomic status. Previous work has established that that this may not be the case and there is...

We investigate the distributional consequences of two different waiting times initiatives, one in Norway, and one in Scotland. The primary focus of Scotland's recent waiting time reforms, introduced in 2003, and modified in 2005 and 2007, has been on reducing maximum waiting times through the...