Routing of two elevators

There are many approaches to model an elevator routing system. In this paper, I shortly describe some literature, wherein different manners to model the routing system are presented. A simulation approach, dynamic programming and polling systems are used to model the routing system. In the simulation approach zoning is often used. Zoning means that the floors are split into a number of zones, each consisting of a group of floors. Different zones are served by different elevators. Dynamic zoning can reduce passenger waiting times in high-rise buildings. But it is still unclear what the effect of zoning policies is in a small building. Therefore I have modelled an elevator routing system in a small building. In the presented model two elevators are considered that are carrying passengers from the ground floor to higher floors in the building only (only up-traffic). Four different policies (three zoning policies and one without zoning) are compared on their performance (waiting times, journey times, average load, and average number of passengers waiting). Does zoning influence the performance of the use of the elevators; will the waiting times decrease? Analyzing the results leads to the conclusion that using zoning policies in such a low building as is used in the model is not preferable above a policy without zoning. Although there is a gain in journey time in a situation with a high intensity of arriving passengers, there are too many drawbacks to use zoning policies in the elevator routing system in a building with a small number of floors. ii Preface My name is Jasper de Boer, born in 1984 and I am studying Business Mathematics and Informatics (BMI) at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. At the end of the Master BMI but before the internship, BMI students write a BMI paper. The main objective of this paper is to do some relevant literature research combining two of the three study disciplines covered by study BMI. Annemieke van Goor, who coordinates the BMI Paper processes, helped me finding a nice supervisor. She lets me contact Wemke van der Weij, who came with an idea for the subject. I want to thank both for their efforts. And Wemke van der Weij in particular for her valuable comments and suggestions. The paper is about the routing of two elevators. I have tried to model an elevator routing system. I have compared several different routing strategies with the …