Students arrive randomly at the help desk of the computer lab. There is only one service agent, and the time required for inquiry varies from student to student. Arrival rates have been found to follow the Poisson distribution, and the service times follow the negative exponential distribution. The average arrival rate is 12 students per hour, and the average service rate is 20 students per hour. On average, how long does it take to service each student?

A queueing model is constructed so that queue lengths and waiting time can be predicted. is generally considered a branch of operations research because the results are often used when making business decisions about the resources needed to provide a service.
A queuing system is characterised by three components: Arrival process - Service mechanism - Queue discipline.

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