A MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING APPROACH TO FUZZY TANDEM QUEUES

Abstract

Tandem queueing models play an important role in many real world systems such as computer systems, production lines, and service systems. This paper proposes a procedure to construct the membership functions of the performance measures in tandem queueing systems, in that the arrival rate and service rates are fuzzy numbers. The basic idea is to transform a fuzzy tandem queue to a family of crisp tandem queues by applying the α -cut approach. Then on the basis of α -cut representation and the extension principle, a pair of mathematical programs is formulated to describe this family of crisp tandem queues, via which the membership functions of the performance measures are derived. Two numerical examples are solved successfully to demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach. Since the performance measures are expressed by membership functions rather than by crisp values, the fuzziness of input information is completely conserved. Thus the proposed approach for fuzzy systems can represent the system more accurately, and more information is provided for designing queueing systems. The successful extension of tandem queues to fuzzy environments permits tandem queueing models to have wider applications.