Chapter 5, Problem 21P

Greg Davis, a business major at the University of Smith Carolina (USC), has opened Six Points Saco (SPS), a specialty subs—taco restaurant, at the rim of the IJSC cam pus. SPS has grown in popularity over the first year that it has been in operation, and Greg is trying to perfect the business model before making it into a franchise. He wants to maximize the productivity of his staff, as well as serve customers well in a timely fashion. One area of concern is the drive-thru operation during the 11:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. lunch hour.

The process of fulfilling an order involves fulfilling the tasks listed in the table.

Greg is interested in getting a better understanding of the staffing patterns that will be needed to operate his restaurant. After taking a course in operations management at the university, he knows that fulfilling a customer order at SPS is very similar to operating an assembly line. He has also used the POM for Windows software before, and wants to apply it for examining different demand scenarios for serving his customers.

1. If all the seven tasks are handled by one employee, how many customers could be served per hour?
2. If Greg wants to process 45 customers per hour, how many employees will he need during the peak period?
3. With the number of employees determined in part (b), what is the maximum number of customers who could be served every hour (i.e., what is the maximum output capacity)?
4. Assuming that no task is assigned to more than one employee, what is the maximum output capacity from this assembly line? How many employees will be needed to actually accomplish this maximum output capacity?
5. Beyond the output accomplished in part (d), if Greg decides to add one additional worker to help out with a bottleneck task, where should he add that worker? With that addition, would he be able to process more customers per hour? If so, what is the new maximum output capacity for the drive-thru?