Reducing Waiting Time of a Network Queuing System Using Open JacksonNetwork Model

Abstract

In Nigeria patients experience prolong waiting time on queues whenever they visit hospitals for treatment. Some of these times wasting are as a result of shortage in man power or unable to assigned the required number of staff at the respective departments of the hospital. This avoidable time wasting usually led to redundancy or deficiency on some departments of the hospital. The Federal Polytechnic Bida school clinic is not left out from this avoidable time wasting. The majority of patients receiving treatments in Federal Polytechnic Bida school clinic are students and staff; this protracted waiting time on queue had often affected the academic performance of the students negatively as a result of missing lectures and worsening of health situation of both the lecturers and students. In this paper, a Network Queuing Model that determines optimal numbers of servers at the nodes of the school clinic network queuing system to reduce waiting time of the patients has been presented. The relevant data was collected for a period four weeks, through direct observations and interviews. The number of arrivals and departures were also obtained. The total expected waiting time of the patient in the current system before modification was 50minutes with total number of 10 servers in all the nodes, while the total new expected waiting time of patient in the system after modification was reduced to 19 minutes with total number of 17 servers in all the nodes. The study has determined optimal number of servers at the nodes of the school clinic network system. Results from this study are important information to the management of the school clinic for proper planning and better service delivery.