Computer method and apparatus to estimate customer arrival times using transactional data

摘要

A method implemented on a computer based system which receives transaction data from terminals and estimates customer arrival times and dynamic queue lengths at the terminals by extracting service time data from the point-of-sale terminals and then grouping customers into busy periods. Based on this information, the method estimates customer arrival times for each busy period. These arrival times may be used to construct a queue length for each busy period, and to calculate queue performance measures based on the constructed queue lengths.