Erlang C Model

The Erlang C model is a steady-state queueing formula that determines the probability a customer must wait before being served in a system with c parallel servers, Poisson arrivals at rate lambda, and exponentially distributed service times. Originally developed by Danish engineer Agner Krarup Erlang in the early twentieth century for telephone exchange design, and formalized in the queueing theory literature by Cooper (1981), it remains the canonical staffing model for call centers and service operations worldwide.