Extract real waiting time from a patient in a waiting line

[sebastien_b49]

[ FlexSim 20.2.3 ]

Hi,

I have a process flow with patients waiting in line. My goal is to get the real waiting time that a patient is spending in the waiting line for waiting only.

I used to measure the time during which the patient was in the waiting line but this is equal to the waiting time + the walking time in the waiting line (Waiting Line Entry and Exit in the attached test model). Hence a patient alone in the waiting line would give 5 seconds waiting time because it took him 5s to go through the waiting line.

I would like to make the model better and more exact by getting only the real waiting time. Is this possible ?

Test Waiting Time.fsm

[Jeanette_Fullmer · Accepted solution]

Hello @Sebastien,

One way you could fix this is for the patient to not go to the wait line if there is no reason for them to wait. To implement this you could use the walk then process (or go to wait room) block of activities and substitute in the wait in line instead of the wait room.

[sebastien_b49]

Thank you @Jeanette F !

The function I need is in the Walk then Process set you mention. I will simply use the "Use Max Wait Timer" for redirecting the token when the patient is waiting.

Thank you again,

[sebastien_b49]

Actually I spoke too fast.

This works only for the first patient going through the process flow. For the following waiting patients it does not work.

The main problem is that the patients have to go through the waiting line, whether they wait or not. Hence I am still stuck.

[Jeanette_Fullmer]

Hello @Sebastien,

In the case of the first patient, they do not have any waiting time because the kiosk is available, so the first patient does not need the waiting line. You could put in a preferred path that goes through the waiting line so the patient still walk through it but the patient does not use the waiting line. All the other patients that follow will need to wait because the kiosk is not available, so their time in the line does correspond to their time waiting.

[sebastien_b49]

Hello @Jeanette F ,

Sorry, I meant this works for the first patient who waits. The ones that stay in the activity "Wait in Line" stay there, wait and do not trigger the "Use Max Wait Timer" for measuring the waiting time. This is because I do not use a Wait Area, and I can't, as the Wait Area is the "Waiting Line" itself.

[FelixMoehlmann]

If you don't vary the walking speed between patients, then the "walking time" should be a constant value that you can simply subtract from the measured time. Or am I missing something?

[sebastien_b49]

Hello @Felix Möhlmann ,

yes the walking speed varies, but it is possible to measure the time spent in the waiting line and deduce the walking time, as we have the walking speed as a patient's label, you are right. That is what we are implementing right now.

Nevertheless, for us, this sounds a bit complicated and has to be implemented for all the waiting lines, and we thought there would be a simpler solution to get the waiting time in a waiting line object.

[FelixMoehlmann]

I do see your point. You could post this as a suggestion to add this functionality to the waiting line object.

Here's how it can be done relatively easily with the current version of the object:

The "On Exit" and "On Ready" events of the waiting line offer the distance of the line as a parameter. Using this, an instanced process flow can measure the time between entry and exit and subtract the travel time for any waiting line connected to it.

test-waiting-time_1.fsm