A note on optimal pricing for finite capacity queueing systems with multiple customer classes

✍ Scribed by Serhan Ziya; Hayriye Ayhan; Robert D. Foley

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 86 KB
• Volume: 55
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-069X
• DOI: 10.1002/nav.20295

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

This article investigates optimal static prices for a finite capacity queueing system serving customers from different classes. We first show that the original multi‐class formulation in which the price for each class is a decision variable can be reformulated as a single dimensional problem with the total load as the decision variable. Using this alternative formulation, we prove an upper bound for the optimal arrival rates for a fairly large class of queueing systems and provide sufficient conditions that ensure the existence of a unique optimal arrival rate vector. We show that these conditions hold for M/M/1/m and M/G/s/s systems and prove structural results on the relationships between the optimal arrival rates and system capacity. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008