Maximizing Throughput in an M/G/1 Queue with Customer Abandonments

Runhua Wu; Hayriye Ayhan; Douglas G. Down

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arXiv · 2606.26544

Maximizing Throughput in an M/G/1 Queue with Customer Abandonments

Runhua Wu·Hayriye Ayhan·Douglas G. Down

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Abstract

This paper studies the problem of identifying the optimal server assignment policy in single-server queues with customer abandonment. We consider a system with Poisson arrivals and exponentially distributed patience times. We show that when service times follow either an Erlang-$K$ or a hyperexponential distribution and the decision maker can observe the phase of a customer's service time, the Shortest Remaining Expected Processing Time (SREPT) policy maximizes the long-run average throughput, independent of the abandonment rate.

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Runhua Wu, Hayriye Ayhan, Douglas G. Down. 2026-06-25. Maximizing Throughput in an M/G/1 Queue with Customer Abandonments. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26544

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