Estimation of Queue Length and Analysis of Reneging Effects in a Bank Branch Setting

Understanding waiting lines or queues and learning how to manage them are one of the most important areas in operations management. In the service economy, people wait in line every day, from driving to work to checking out at the supermarket or opening a new account in a bank. It is basic to create schedules, job design, inventory levels, and so on. In short, waiting lines are pervasive. It is important for a bank to estimate the number of customers arriving in a branch at a given point in time to manage the resources wisely, and at the same time help customers with the onerous process of waiting.This study attempts to look at the problem of long queues in bank, and how each different customer behavior (e.g. reneging: when a person, who has entered a line, later decides to leave it without being served) affects the arrival rate and overall service performance of the branch. Queuing theory is a well-studied form of operations research that answers these questions. In this paper, customer arrivals in a bank branch is studied along with the effects of reneging for one of the largest bank in Asia using techniques like stochastic models and regression analysis.