Optimal admission control in queues with workload-dependent service rates

We consider a queuing system with a workload-dependent service rate. We specifically assume that the service rate is first increasing and then decreasing as a function of the amount of work. The latter qualitative behavior is quite common in practical situations, such as production systems. The admission of work into the system is controlled by a policy for accepting or rejecting jobs, depending on the state of the system. We seek an admission control policy that maximizes the longrun throughput. Under certain conditions, we show that a threshold policy is optimal, and we derive a criterion for determining the optimal threshold value. © 2006 Cambridge University Press.