Modeling time-varying loading docks

Abstract: In this paper several Markov models have been created for simulating queues at loading docks with discrete time Markov chains and a optimization algorithm in regard to server capacity has been presented. The queuing systems have been modeled with exponential and Erlang-2 distributed service rate. They have also been modeled for one class or a simplification of two classes. An attempt was made to find a scaling factor for the service rate to use the one class exponential model to replicate the other models. This was suÿciently successful done with derivation and linear regression. The optimization was done with a greedy approach. It was computationally eÿcient, but could not guarantee global optimality.