2ND-ORDER PROPERTIES IN A TANDEM QUEUE WITH GENERAL BLOCKING

We study second order properties of a series of single server queues, controlled using the 'general blocking mechanism'. It has been shown that this blocking mechanism generalizes and unifies the commonly studied communication, manufacturing, and Kanban blockings as special cases. We consider two ways external arrivals are communicated to the system. For both cases, using the notion of strong stochastic convexity and the sample path analysis technique, second order properties for system throughput and system size are established with respect to the buffer capacity as well as the (integer) control parameters.