To Pool or Not to Pool: Queueing Design for Large-Scale Service Systems.

In large-scale service systems, it is a common practice to organize customers with similar service requirements into a single queue served by a group of servers. This pooled queue structure is deemed highly efficient because the servers’ idleness will be minimized. In “To Pool or Not to Pool: Queueing Design for Large-Scale Service Systems,” Cao, He, Huang, and Liu demonstrate that the dedicated queue structure, under which each server has her own queue, could be more advantageous for improving the system’s service level. Moreover, the servers’ additional idleness induced by the dedicated queue structure will be negligible when the system scale is large. By solving a staffing problem, this study also intends to help service system designers answer the following question: To achieve a specified service-level objective in a more efficient manner, should the servers have a common queue or separate queues?