A relaxation time heuristic for exponential-Erlang queueing systems

The relaxation time heuristic is a technique for reducing initialization bias in the simulation of stationary, infinite-capacity, Markovian queueing systems. It differs from many existing methods in that no preliminary simulation runs are required; it is based on characteristics of the underlying theoretical model. The authors apply and evaluate the relaxation time heuristic for estimation of the steady-state expected number of customers in M/Ek/1 and Ek/M/1 queueing systems.