Computer modeling of customer service: cases of buyer queues in pharmacies

Abstract

The article deals with the maintenance of retail buyers of drugs and medical products in pharmacies. In particular, possible buyer queues in pharmacies are considered. The aim of the work is to reduce such queues and optimize the work of the attendants at the pharmacy while selling medicines and other pharmaceutical products. To this end, it is proposed to consider and simulate queues such as queuing systems with appropriate parameters. In the work, possible variants of such queues in pharmacies were preliminarily analyzed and a cortege approach for their formalized description has been developed. According to the results of field observations in pharmacies in Kharkiv, statistically substantiated distributions of the main parameters of the system were obtained, such as the intervals of the appearance of customers, their time in queue, and the duration of service by the pharmacist, and the number of purchases. Then computer queue models were developed for different options for customer service in pharmacies using a specialized simulation package ExtendSim. Numerical experiments were carried out with these models and their results are presented. Based on the analysis of the results of simulation modeling, practical recommendations for improving the servicing of visitors and for optimizing the work of the pharmacy attendants themselves in various practical situations have been developed and proposed.