Optimal Operating Policies for a Stochastic Clearing System with Bounded Waiting Times

Abstract

This paper is a continuation of a previous paper where we investigated the steady-state behaviour of a stochastic clearing system with Poisson input operated under the following clearing policy : all the quantity is instantaneously removed from the system whenever there are at least M items in the queue, or every t time units since the first arrival after the last clearing, whichever occurs first. This type of policy was termed a bounded M-policy. The objective of this paper is to examine the behaviour of the expected average cost per unit time in the class of bounded M-policies and in the class of T-policies that clear the system every T time units. We find optimal policies in both classes by comparing the associated expected average costs, and present some computational results.