Earlier this week, I went to Jiffy Lube to get my oil change. I once worked for a person responsible for the redesign of many waiting rooms in various industries, so I went with an observant eye, looking for the items that he taught me about in his ethnographic work.   It was a very […]

Attitude While Waiting and Psychology of Queueing is the topic of this article. This is exactly what we learn in a recent movie I saw. I took the kids to see a movie at a nearby dollar theater many weeks ago.  We saw Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and some parts of that movie has stayed […]

One of the key lessons in is that the contraint or the bottleneck determines the throughput for the entire system.  This means, then, that if we optimize and improve a non-bottleneck, then those efforts have almost zero impact on the overall throughput of the system.  It is only when we improve and optimize the contraint […]

All processes are subject to some variability.  More common explanations of variability describes variability as either Common-Cause or Special-Cause.  The former is easiest explained as expected variation within a process that is produced by the process itself.  The latter, on the hand, is variation that is produced by the process by is assignable to some […]

This weekend my wife and I waited in the cold, wet, Utah winter weather to go through a haunted house — The Castle of Chaos.  In the course of trying to enjoy an annual American holiday tradition — Halloween — I received another lesson on the Psychology of Queueing instead. You can also view all […]

More and more gas stations have television displays that play commercials and T.V. shows as you pump gas.  While the primary motivation for these firms is to increase brand awareness through commercialization and penetration, this entertain-while-you-wait is also a manifestation of Queueing Psychology. There are a few key behavioral responses or reactions to queues, or […]

I went to California earlier this week for business.  I rode in an elevator and that experience reminded me of a simple, yet effective way to aleviate the negative feelings that accompany waiting, or the Psychology of Queueing — mirrors in an elevator. You can also view all 40+ articles on Queueing Theory. There are a […]

I found this nice case study of Queueing Theory applied to the problems of terrorism.  In general, the problems of terrorism can be summed-up as a constraint problem, where there is more demand for a thing than there is suppy to meet it.  Couple that dynamic with the fact that people’s lives are at stake, […]

Multitasking Leads to Lower Productivity according to Little’s Law. It is a myth: It leads to lower productivity not higher. This article and others like can be found at my Queueing Theory page. There is a predisposition for firms and people to think that multi-tasking is heroic, leads to more productive employees and, is generally, becoming more and […]