[Math] Expected waiting time with $m$ tellers and $n$ customers at a bank

probability

Suppose we have the following scenario:

There are $n$ customers at a bank who wish to speak with bank tellers.
There are $m$ tellers, and each of the $n$ customers is willing to
speak to any of the $m$ tellers. Rather than forming individual lines
for each teller, the customers form a single queue, and the next
person in line goes to the next available teller. The amount of time
each customer spends with the teller is exponentially distributed with
mean $\lambda$. Compute the expected waiting time for the person next
in line in the queue. (You may neglect the time it takes someone to
walk from the queue to the teller.)

Anyone know how to solve this? This isn't a homework question, but rather a question from a class that I took back in college (it is of particular relevance at the moment as I am needing to compute this sort of a quantity for a piece of software that I am writing).

Best Answer

Because you imply there are people queued, I assume $n > m.$ Each person in line begins service when the next teller becomes available. That happens at rate $m/\lambda,$ so the mean waiting time in the queue for the next customer is $\lambda/m.$ The mean time until that customer finishes being served is $\lambda/m + \lambda.$

Notes: (1) To avoid potential confusion, texts on queueing models typically use $\lambda$ for the rate of arrival of new customers, and $\mu$ for the service rate. Means of exponential distributions are the reciprocals of rates.

(2) The distribution of the waiting time for the minimum of $k$ exponential waiting times (next available server) is exponential with a rate of $k$ times the rate for individual servers (assuming all rates equal).

(3) If you want to look for more on this topic, I suggest you read about $M/M/k$ queues. The first M stands for (Markov, memoryless, or exponential) interarrival times, the second M for exponential service times, and the k for the number of servers.