With the information given in Problem 1, the managers of the Administrative Services
Office estimate that the time a student spends waiting costs them (due to loss of
goodwill, that is, students hate waiting in line before getting served) $10 per hour. To
reduce the time a student spends waiting, they know that they need to improve Judy’s
processing time (see the last problem). They are currently considering the following
two options:
a. Install a computer system, with which Judy expects to be able to complete a
student request 40 percent faster (from 2 minutes per request to 1 minute and
12 seconds, for example).
b. re another temporary clerk working in parallel serving a single queue, who
will work at the same rate as Judy.
If the computer costs $50 to operate per day, while the temporary clerk gets paid $70
per day, is Judy right to prefer the hired ? Assume Poisson arrivals and
exponential service times.
