Discrete event simulation applied to single queue management: a case study at a bank agency

Abstract

Capacity and queue management are currently used in financial institutions. With decreasing bank units due to internet services, research in this field has focused on improving to utilize their employees efficiently and achieve service excellence. In developing countries like Brazil, the customer has become more bank-accounted due to government and labor requirements, such as the wage credit became mandatory in the wage account. The paper's aim is motivated by a real-life case study to simulate discrete events to improve queue management at a Brazilian bank branch with the Arena software simulation environment. The simulation model was designed, tested, and applied considering the Discrete Event Simulation (DES) replication for queuing strategies on a real-world banking scenario. The arrival and service times were collected from 115 customers in Ferraz de Vasconcelos/SP city. It was performed in version 15.10 (2018) of the Arena software, with processor Intel core i3 CPU dual-core 3.07 GHz and 8GB of RAM. The results indicate that the bank agency should consider providing 9 to 11 operators to attend customers considering the arrival and service rate.