Reference no: EM133594519
Breakfast at the Paramount The objective of this case study is to deepen your understanding of real-world waiting line systems, their complexities, how to manage and improve such systems, the psychology of waiting, as well as their implication on the value proposition. The following questions will prepare you for our class discussion on this case. Questions
Question 1. Draw a process flow diagram for a dine-in customer at the restaurant. Specify the activities, the resources, and the activity time for each activity. Analyze the bottleneck and capacity of the process. Note 1: Assume that the occupation of the 44 seats is at 80%, that is, the actual number of seats (effective sitting capacity) is 44*80%=35.2. This is based on the consideration that a party of customers may occupy a table with more seats than the number of customers in the party, for example, a party of six may occupy an 8-person table. Note 2: The two employees at the drink-and-pay station can work in parallel on both tasks.
Question 2. How does the seating policy at Paramount differ from a usual sitting policy? What is the reason for Paramount to adopt this seating policy?
Question 3. Using data in Exhibit 6, the average arrivals per hour on a Saturday morning from 7 to 11:30am is 88.7. With the arrival information and your analysis of the process capacity, what is the expected waiting time and queue length (number of customers waiting) on a Saturday morning? You may assume exponential distributions
Question 4. What advice do you have for Michael Conlon about how to respond to the increase in carryout orders at the Paramount? Why was he tempted to increase carryout? Why was he tempted to decrease carryout?
Question 5. Based on your reading of the case, why do customers put up with the line (that is, why do they love the Paramount)? What factors contribute to and detract from dine-in customers' service experiences waiting in line at the Paramount? What ideas do you have to improve the experience?