APPLICATION OF QUEUEING THEORY TO PERFORMANCE CHARACTERIZATION OF A MEDIUM SCALE VEGETABLE OIL- PRODUCING PLANT IN OWERRI

Summary

The performance characterization of a medium scale vegetable oil plant in Owerri is presented. Using the
queue methodology, it was established that the plant operates the queue model [(M1/M2/s);(infinite, F-C,F-S)]
with Poisson arrival mass rate of palm kernel and Poisson processing rate of the machines and multiple but
identical servers. Infinite population and strict queue discipline of First-Come, First-Served. The performance
characteristics of the queue system of the plant; queue length, waiting time in queue, number of units in system
and waiting time in the system were discovered to decrease with decreases in utilization factor or decrease in
number of processing machines. As a result the total time spent in the system is dominated more by service time
rather than waiting time in queue. At 0.745 utilization factor the waiting time in system is 1.86 days out of
which 0.49 days is waiting time in queue. There is triple increase in waiting time in queue and queue length at
any machine breakdown. This queue performance unveiled, equips the management with critical information
that enables cost effective management of the queue problems of the plant.

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