Why the other line is likely to move faster
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- Опубліковано 19 гру 2010
- Bill reveals how "queueing theory" - developed by engineers to route phone calls - can be used to find the most efficient arrangement of cashiers and check out lines. He reports on the work of Agner Erlang, a Danish engineer who, at the opening of the 20th century, helped the Copenhagen Telephone Company provide the best level of service at the lowest price.
- Наука та технологія
How does this guy not have a TV show?
This is his TV show. What I want is the ability to save his videos to SD card or Blu Ray disk.
+Batfan1939 just use downloader lol,in HD or go to his site maybe?
Because you learn something from it,
Alex Ehler ikr
Because this is how we do TV in 2016. At least UA-cam is the new TV for me.
There's another reason why other lines move faster.
When you move faster, you are out of there before you feel the need to start tracking. It is only when you are stuck that you start comparing and realise that you have, indeed, made less progress.
DarKMaTTeR
That and the fact that you spend more time in the slower lane.
Given 2 lanes, one takes twice the time of the other but you don't know which one. You will 50% of the time choose the slower one and as a consequence spend 67% of the time in the slower lane.
Confirmation bias
(right? Tbh i feel like im mixing up things here)
Good point. And also, when you do move slower, you spend more time in the store (say 3 minutes instead of 1), so you will spend 2x 1 minute checking out fast, but 1x 3 minutes checking out slow, so you'll spend 60% of your time checking out slowly
@@americantoastman7296 Right. Anecdotal evidence may indicate that one person left the store quickly therefore there was no delay, but other shoppers may have experienced a delay. You can't judge this kind of thing on an individual basis, it has to be statistically studied en mass.
Whenever I join a line and put all my stuff on the conveyor, the cashier inevitably gets up and walks away for at least 5 mins, presumably to take a dump or something 🙄😑
Another benefit of a single queue system is greater flexibility, you can open/close tills at will without having to do any awkward queue re-arranging.
sometimes i just shit on the floor and everyone claps to the rythm of the drops... the line will disappear in no time
@@chrisakaschulbus4903
@@jon9103 you look so cute when you sleep in your bed :)
This is why I like self-check out lines...When there is a line, everyone makes one single line for the 4 check outs near my store. It works tremendously well.
And it helps that at off-peak times we can still use every single self-chexkout machine. Whereas the number of cashiers reduces when there are fewer customers
Now if only these same retailers will adapt this for their manned registers. This is one of the things I love about some of my local computer and office supplies specialty stores having a single line feeding multiple registers, with online orders having a line all to themselves.
@@ZeldagigafanMatthew And a single line feeding multiple tellers at a bank/credit union. My branch does that.
I work at a movie theater and I tried explaining to my manager that one line would be faster than a line for each cashier but he just refused to believe it. I showed him your video and now we just have one line. You da man!
Bill looks a little like Mark Hamill.
what a dreamboat! hubba hubba!
Chris Wright and sounds like a Baldwin
Ikr he looks like skips from regular show
Back when this came out, Fry's Electronics was the only store I knew of that used the single-line system, which they also used to market stuff to you while you waited for a cashier. Now, lots of stores are doing that, though it's usually because of the prevalence of self-checkout systems. The Wal-Marts near me are almost entirely self-check at this point, which lowers the store's cost on employees, is preferable to many people in a post-Covid world, and most importantly to me, means that there's almost never a line. It's reached the point that if every single register is occupied, I'll instantly get impatient, even if I'm the only one in line.
RIP Fry's Electronics. I still don't know where I'm going to buy a TV next.
The fastest line is always running away without paying.
Yeah cause no one is doing that... I wonder why? XD
It is also the fastest line to jail.
Yeah, make them come to YOU. Smart.
This gentlemen is democracy manifest...
when I worked in retail when it got really busy the customers would just get in one line and go to the nearest open register when available all on there own. It was quite interesting.
I tried this at the airport TSA line. Not a good idea.
huh....what store/place?
the kind of people that make up the line makes a huge difference
England?
japan would probably do this
I've tried to initiate a "single queue" before. Generally there is some butthead that just steps right up in front of everyone else. They seem to think everyone in the world enjoys waiting in line, except them.
Queueing. What a word.
Peter Timowreef it looks like belly dancing from right to left
you've never heard queuing before?
Qing. There. Sorted it for you.
American?
Only word in the English language with 5 consecutive vowels
Bill, you're awesome! You have found the recipe to explain stuff very well and make us smile too. Thanks!
Many of the newer stores in my country now have on line for multiple cashiers. Now I know why.
Which country would that be? Sounds like I should consider moving there. :)
@@notthere83 Switzerland. Better wait till the pandemic is over though. We're not handling it too well.
@@bullsquid42 Oh! Hey there neighbor! Wish that that would also catch on in Austria. And I don't mean the virus. ;)
Good to know though, thanks!
There is a supermarket here in Portugal doing the 1 line system, and i used to avoid it because i though it was stupid. One day i tried and it was very fast(1 line for about 10 cashiers). Now i know why!
Pedro Mendes I was going to say that :D
Better yet, some supermarket offer 3 cashing systems at the same time: Some cashiers with the usual "one queue per cashier", for those who are used to that.
A self service area with a single cashier and multiple computers, they're nice for small purchases if you're not scared of technology, there's always a free computer and even if they're all busy, the wait is really short.
And the multiple cashier and one queue system above, the best and fastest system overall.
Most Whole Foods in the US use the 1 queue system. Once you use it you know it cruises!
I'd argue that register queues are actually a middle ground between the two. People already choose the shortest line on arrival, and they can and will switch if one is significantly faster or shorter. There will never be an idle cashier as long as there are more waiting customers than registers.
This way it does behave like a single line that splits up with just a small line-specific buffer at the end.
How can she be calling a landline at a store? I think you gave yourself away Bill.
Brilliant and hilarious point!
BUSTED
That's the point
well, bill could have some sort of call forwarding for his home line to his cellphone...
You're assuming she knows it's a landline. Maybe she doesn't.
that is fascinating. in the old days there was a store called consumers distributing and they functioned like that. you would come in, get the catalogue, choose an item, fill out a form with a product number, line up and one by one the line fed to 3 cashiers who would get the item, bring it and cash out. very fast. i miss that store. i miss people. we used to be human.
your vids are incredibly well put together and provoke cirtical thinking as well have having an element of entertainment. well done!!
Actually I'm seeing the number of stores using that single line feed system growing. I know of a dozen or so stores around here that use it though to be fair it is mainly book, electronics, and clothing stores that I've seen do it.
Remember this is from 2010
Remember, the actual idea is from 1909 as stated in the beginning of the video :')
Walmart does this a lot actually 3-4 registers to a "line"
The functionality of it depends on the layout of the store. It isn't fully applicable at a place like Walmart, because they have express lanes and a cigarette aisle, but all self checkout areas in stores use it (though people paying with cash gum up the works.)
Also, studies have shown (Disney, etc) that if there are two or more lines, on average, most people will tend to go to the right-most line as they are right handed. Thus, going to the left-most line is usually shorter. Not always, but usually.
Just like rush hour traffic. You pass people in the other lane, 3 minutes later they pass you, then you pass them, on and on. Some people constantly change to the "faster" lane, only for you to pass them 2 minutes later, then they switch back and tailgate you. Idiots making traffic worse than it has to be.
The solution is to have 1 lane for every single road. Too easy
@00justSomeAccount00 Maniacs. They're maniacs. The ones doing 45 on the highway are the idiots.
I avoid lines by goign shopping when there are fewer shoppers (in Spain that's when there's a football match).
agun17 Me to. In the US, evenings on weekdays. Just a heads up, day time shoppers (week days) are old people and um... people who don't have jobs (like me) and they do not move very fast.
+Keith Larsen And they pay with accurate change. *Shudder* So many pennies
@@renaminginprogress6903 *nice*
@@renaminginprogress6903 Because you apparently never grew up.
@subrosian :
The trick is: It's not about overall speed, it's about your personal speed. One waiting line leading to multiple cashiers avoids the situation that you're second in line but the guy in front of you takes forever. This is especially true if the time needed by a customer varies greatly (for example train tickets where it can be anything from a one-minute-buy to 30-minute-bookings with hotel recommendations).
I do think the average does down too but not sure anymore ;)
Buying books for classes today at my university...used the single queue method...couldn't stop thinking of this video.
Discrete Event Simulation was a course I had to take and we had examples similar to this using a bank with multiple tellers and a single queue and with multiple queues. Nice video, thanks.
Any store that uses the 1 line system always makes me like it more.
The Post Office usually has the long line feeding up to multiple clerks. Also at the tax office, where license plates are renewed does this. Then stores like Wal-mart, who typically don't do that, will employ it on busy days like black Friday. Yes it is unnerving to see that big line. One nice thing, though. I can estimate about how long it will take by timing how far I move in the first few minutes, then multiply. This can be estimated by counting the ceiling tiles between me and the front of the line.
+David Scott great algorithm, always works with single queues
Yeah that's another reason why stores prefer multiple lines. The one huge line, while more efficient, just *looks* much longer and may make some people turn away at the door.
That could be a double edge sword... a single long line may be a turn off for people, but if it is moving quickly it could still be something that people are willing to endear... the multiple shorter lines might not have the same immediate effect on someone's psyche, but if it looks like they are hardly moving, the customer may come to the conclusion that the cashiers are slow and decide to turn away anyway.
There's actually a great solution for this problem. As long as people are moving, they don't "feel" like they are in line. This is how Disneyland and other amusement parks try to operate. You walk for quite a ways while in line, but you only stop walking to get on the ride.
Frys Electronics also uses the single line technique. It seems to move fast.
This is what online content should be. Thank you!
The best way to pick which line to get in is any line that I am not standing in. It almost never fails: the person(s) ahead of me want to write a check but doesn't have their driver's license on them. The cash register runs out of paper. One of their items doesn't register the price so they have to call a supervisor. The customer ahead of me is shopping for someone else besides themselves and has to pay for everything separately. There's plenty more.
The concept of having a single line feed multiple cashiers is what the Office Depot where I work is implemented, and it's working really well.
I love the thought put into such seemingly simple things.
in the call center industry, determining the sizing of a team taking customers calls is defined on: the avg call duration, the contractual service level(%of calls to be answered within less than an amount of seconds) the calls arrival patterns during the day and can be a little bit more trickier than that...Earlang (C) formula is mostly used in the equation. Personally I also call it the rest room formula, that decides on how many wc you'll need in a home? playing with the variables: acceptable waiting time; avg pee/poop time; nbr of individuals at home!
where I live frys does this and it is awesome Best buy even does it. I much prefer the single line over multiple any day
Many stores have this "one line for all cashiers" arrangement now. Microcenter always had this as far back as I can remember.
I remember this exact example from the College Statistics class I recently took. It was used to demonstrate the concept of standard deviation; they said that while the mean is EXACTLY the same between the two systems, the standard deviation is far less when stores use a single line. In other words, only the variability of waiting time changes, not the average.
That seems completely at odds with the Engineer guy's statement at 1:55, that the single line system is "about 3 times faster".
I've seen this being implemented at the Australian retailers "the Reject Shop" and "JB HiFi". Makes sense now, thank you.
The Mythbusters found that the single line feeding the registers was faster. I think the best way would be to have one person waiting behind the customer being served, that way registers are not waiting for a customer to walk all the way to their register. Also, the second person could be loading their items onto the belt while the other is paying.
These are all intersting and well presented.
Thanks and congratulations for the videos. They are all amazing and make me love even more engineering.
I just have a suggestion. If you could subtitle them, it would help people like me, who has some difficulties in understanding perfectly the spoken English language.
What a cool, unintrusive, non-patronising, well put together, and useful video. You've earned yourself a subscriber.
The British are well known for how good at queuing they are and they do this voluntarily. I love it. It really does speed up the queue, but sadly it means that you never get that warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that you've outsmarted all the other customers. Although you do have the pleasure of outrage and indignation, when some foreigner (tourist) doesn't get it, walks past the queue and stands behind one of the people currently ordering and wondering why all these people are randomly queuing.
Helpful hints for picking the fast moving line...
1.) The older the people that are waiting in line, the more likely that they're retired and don't have to be anywhere anytime soon. These also tend to be the people least likely to be able to use technology well. Ever try to see a 90 year old woman hand the cashier a dozen coupons and then try to pay with an I-phone? It can take awhile.
2.) Single men seem to buy less stuff and are the least chatty types. If you see a line with 4 single men compared to 3 couples, the first line will move faster.
3.) Anyone who has cash out before even talking to the staff wants to be as efficient as possible. They're the people you want to get behind.
This will improve the odds of getting into the faster line by some degree. You might be able to get it to 50/50 or better with practice. It certainly beats 1/3.
My local supermarket had the single queue system from its opening. (I'm not a fan. Prefer multiple queues.) However, the practice in South Africa is to line the single queue with impulse purchase items: sweets, chocolates and the like. After not having visited the store for a while, I returned to find that the single-queue system had been installed. (I was a happy customer!) Discussing this with the cashier, I learned that the reason for removing the abattoir cattle queue through the sweets and chocolates was the shoplifting going on as the line looped back on itself towards the cashiers. I wonder if this is a problem in other places too?
Engineerguy,, your videos are outstanding, really interesting and well done.
Here in COVID times, my grocery store is using the one line for all cashiers model and I love it. I hope they stick to it even when the pandemic ends.
We modeled bank teller queues using queuing theory and the General Purpose System Simulator when I was in college. Back in the seventies banks were just starting to convert the teller lines to a common queue. The results of our simulations were impressive. Few stores do this because of the amount of floor space required for a common queue. Banks, Fry's Electronics, Tower Records before they folded are the ones I can think of.
yet again you bedazzle us with knowledge.
sir, if you made videos i will GLADLY buy them, and distribute them across all Australian Schools
I always look forwards to your videos. Great video.
This makes so much sense! Thanks for the insight!
During covid we had one single line, and the customers were directed to the next free cashier to avoid crowding. That was good
Amazing. Now I can relax when I see other line moving faster
You're just amazing. I can now understand why I feel unlucky when I'm in a line.
In my younger days, I just picked the line with the best-looking cashier. If it turned out to be the slow line, it didn’t really matter. It just meant more time to admire them.
This is a factor for me too 😜😆
Nice one Bill - Oslo Airport Tax-Free has the "queue for a cashier" system...
I used to like it purely for the simple reason that it forced a culture with no respect for queue order to actually queue; now I understand the engineering behind it, and have to agree the line does actually move quite quickly!!!
Just imagine 2-4 plane loads of no-idea-how-to-politely-queue-people arriving home from their holidays - with the price of booze and tobacco here it's like a post curfew looting event!!!
I have no clue why every single store doesn't do this.
"ROSS Dress For Less" has a 1 line system for all the registers (in my town anyways). They even have a light-up sign that tells you which register is open
rockthestrand Here in portugal we have those one queue systems.
He already said why.
@everythingisthat12 That is, your phone call request is queued the same way as in the single-line method; once your call is the first in the queue, your request is directed to the first free operator, similar to how your shopping transaction would be directed to the first open cashier once you're in the front of the line.
I like how this video was made exactly today.
i just noticed last week that marshalls and home goods stores have this new line. they changed it in the past few months... and I love it!
Fry's has the single queue checkouts. they also benifit from easily and compactly building massive surge capacity. all the cashiers are on one long bench and employees can move into place when needed, shut down a register and open others without any delay.
many stores these days build a hybrid with customers picking the line they like but each of those feeds 2-3 cashiers laid out in series. Target and Cabella's come to mind.
Having worked at Disneyland, I'd like to point out that theme parks are the perfect way to experience practically every conceivable type of line in one day. For example, small retail and dining locations in the park had just one cash register, so a long line would form. Mid-sized retail and dining locations often had two or three registers, but usually had only one queue that fed all of them. The largest retail locations would have several different areas of cash registers, some with one queue that fed multiple registers, and some with individual lines. The queues for attractions are far more complicated, because you'll often have two different lines (Standby and Lightning Lane/Fastpass) that had to combine at some point and then split apart later at the boarding area, whereas a third line (Single Rider) fed directly into the loading zone. I feel like theme park design is the perfect microcosm to study human behavior in a controlled environment, where crowds and groupthink and social norms result in unexpected results.
I really enjoy your videos.
these are always such great videos.. i dont know why people give thumbs down.. BTW does wholefoods multiple line multiple cashier setup take aim at the psychological thing you said about customers?
This is a great video!
I’m glad I found this channel
This was actually one of the final project options we were given for my cs class. Interesting...
This guy is an absolute unit
Good to see how nowadays most supermarkets have this model, by using a screen telling the customer which cashier to go.
I like the one line system, while i was in Poland a store had it, it was faster than expected.
I have an exam on this in 2 days. The single queue system produces shorter average wait times, but grocery stores choose to have a line for each register in order to maximize accessibility.
Great video!
Disney has decided it's a good idea to make their attraction Standby lines as slow as possible, so people will pay to skip them.
Erlangs is to do with BHCA - "Busy Hour Call Attempts" - I remember this from my experiments with telephone systems back in the 1990s :)
I've seen the Combined Queue at work in Walmart! Traditional Queues + Combined Queues at my local Superstore so customers can choose the queue they'd like to take a chance on. lol Thanks for the explanation!
I will never have road rage again thanks to your video.
Simple and brilliant.
@Gerrrry
This style of checkout is pretty much standard in the smaller urban supermarkets in London, they work well and usually have an automated system to call the next customer to the appropriate cashier. I am sure the employers have some measure of operator speed, they sure did when I was working in a supermarket as a student.
I'll sometimes stand in the middle. If someone asks which line I'm in, I say I'm waiting for the next available. Putting it that was asserts my "nextness" over them.
@engineerguyvideo I tried searching for you on Zune, not there, but I added your feed manually. Thanks for the tip!
Not companies, but people are to blame for this. People's intuition fails them, causing them to think that somehow three or more lines should be faster than one. And companies want to keep their customers happy. In airports, people don't like standing in long lines, although it actually moves really fast.
That bit about the other lines likely being faster, reminds me of why you should always change your answer when he opens a door and shows you a goat.
I find these videos interesting, subscribed..
In Britain at least it seems it simply comes down to shop type. So Supermarkets, DIY Shops and the larger Home Furnishing Shops will tend to have individual queues - primarily shops that use conveyor check-outs. Then all of the smaller shops, what we would consider high-street shops like Clothes Shops, Entertainment Shops, Phone Shops etc pretty much all use single queue system. This includes the banks and the post office. The exception on the high-street / in the shopping centre(mall) tends to only be the fast-food outlets like McD's and KFC which as it goes are American chains and other fast-food places modelled upon them. Though also as many have mentioned this is changing in the supermarkets with Self-checkout and while there is an assistant present to sort any issues and perform the odd age check they rarely need to prompt customers that there is a free checkout as you can be sure others in the queue will have done that if the person at the front takes a second too long haha.
Thanks Mark Hamill for explaining this things!!!
@engineerguyvideo Sorry! I hadn't seen the site. It really helps a lot. Thank you again and please keep the excelent work.
Caching is the answer to everything, or maybe it's just the software programmer in me. Awesome video. Happy holidays.
I now understand why the que at the airport passport check is made like this. A few very long lines of people and at the end the people are divided among the many check desks by the airport employees.
I can't speak for my ancestors at the turn of the century but if phone plans and the fact that Denmark has some of the fastest internet in the world is an indicator we do like to talk.
I'm a business student. We went over this in a quantitative analysis course.
The use of one queue line is used for automated cashiers in my country although it also features a human router and a supervisor, so two out of all of the automated cashiers are human.
single lines are used for loads of things, post offices and banks for example (in UK at least)
That was a very interesting expanding of my knowledge!
I allways trust my intuition, which line should I go to though.
Sometimes it's the fastest, other times with the nice girl - who knows what's better in the long run.
Great video! :)
Queueing theory is an interesting subject.
The supermarket where I usually shop switched a few months ago from the traditional one-queue-per-cashier method to the single-queue method. It is much better now. Since they switched, I've barely had to wait at all, and I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes or so, on busy days. Previously, it was common to wait on a three-deep queue for 15 minutes or more. In addition, it's better to just go directly to the only queue, instead of having to walk around, trying to guess which queue to choose. Single queue FTW.
I knew it! People always tell me it's because I'm clipping my coupons at the register and insisting on writing a check.
This guy makes this horrible, vapid, mind-numbing Internet worthwhile.
your a genius with a line all of your own
súper didáctico! Bien hecho
Very enlightening video. There is another way to circumvent long lines: BAN THE USE OF CHECKS.
Every Shop I've been to with a Combined Queue has had a significantly more efficient checkout. Also it's like an unwritten rule to form a Combined Queue at the Auto Shop.
Kohl's and a few other stores, actually use one line to feed several registers. I prefer that method, the line seems long, but it moves fairly quickly.
This video is freaking awesome!!!!!
That ringing phone, why does that noise (and similar noises, such as those buzzer alarm clocks) seem to wake me up faster than the feeling of falling.