Abstract
In factories it is common that there are a limited number of spaces for the pieces; similarly, waiting rooms in a hospital can accommodate a limited number of people. Chapter 6 is dedicated to multi-stage systems where the stations have limited space for the queue; the chapter begins with the M/M/1/K systems and the calculation of its performance measures; the following is the bowl phenomenon and its implications in the efficiency of a system; then the M/G/1/K systems and the approaches developed to estimate the performance of this class of systems are presented. The chapter ends with the presentation of some optimization problems related to the M/M/c/K and M/G/c/K systems. Several codes are proposed in Scilab Language to perform calculations automatically.