Drive-through window operations are becoming an increasing source of competitive

Question

Drive-through window operations are becoming an increasing source of competitive advantage for the fast-food restaurant business. McBerger’s has performed poorly in this area compared to Mandy’s, the leader in drive-through operations. The service from a drive-through window is staged. At the first stage, the customer places an order. At the second stage, the customer makes a payment at the payment window. Finally, at the third stage, the customer picks up the order. The time between consecutive customer arrivals is exponentially distributed with an average of 45 seconds. Currently, McBerger’s total service time (across three stages) averaged 55 seconds with a standard deviation of 35 seconds. Several new process changes were made. Assume that no customers abandon the system or are blocked after entry in either system (before or after the change). a. Competitors have experimented with a separate kitchen to service the drive-through orders. When McBerger’s implemented this new “plant-within-a-plant” strategy, average service time remained at 55 seconds but with a standard deviation of 25 seconds. As a result of this change, did the average waiting time in queue increase, decrease, or remain the same? b. McBerger’s began testing the installation of a transponder on a customer’s windshield that allowed the restaurant to scan the identification of the car. Using this technology, the customers were billed directly instead of paying at the window. As a result of this technology, do you think the average waiting time increased, decreased, or remained the same?

Explanation / Answer

- The current average time taken by McBerger to serve a customer from taking an order to final delivery is 55 seconds.

- The current standerd deviation is 35 seconds.

a. When the Mcberger started the services, they were having the same average time, but the standerd deviation was significantly low, that is 25 seconds.

- Standerd deviation is difference between the mean (average) and the max. or min. frequency on each side.

- It is not necessary that the averege will increase due to increase in the standered deviation. But the diferrence between the min. time taken to serve a customer and max. time to serve another customer increases.

- This will lead to high expectation among the customers that are been served in very less time, for the similar servive next time. And the probalility of such servie would decrease as standered deviation is increased.

b. In operations, when there are series of operation carried out on a line, (same as assembly line in a car manufacturing company), the total time taken to get a output from a system depends on the time taken by the slowest operation. That is called as bottlenect operation.

- In the above question, there are three operations: - 1. making the order 2. bill payment 3. taking the delivery. Transponder has been installed on the windshield of the car. This will make the payment directly and thus the operation no. (2.bill payment), will be removed.

- Now as discussed above, the total time of the operations depends on the time of the slowest operation. This new technology will decrease the time will this was the bottle neck operation (slowest operation), and the new time will be time taken by the next slowest operation among the operation no. 1 and 3. And the same will hold true for the total time to increase or remains same as before.

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