Take a look at the new version of this page: [ beta version ]. Tell us what you think.

ABSTRACT

As part of an undergraduate engineering class project, a Tim Hortons restaurant on the University of Michigan campus was simulated to improve its efficiency. Using the standard simulation study steps, several service scenarios were modeled and evaluated based on customer system time. A detailed analysis of the simulation revealed that, in the current setup, the utilization of the cash registers is high (88%); consequently, several scenarios that decrease the load on the cash registers were explored. To reduce customer wait times and, therefore, serve more customers per hour, it is recommended that Tim Hortons operate with five servers. A five-person setup with three cashiers, a soup server, and a sandwich server could reduce customer system time by over two minutes per customer. As an alternative, transferring all food preparation to the secondary service location and adding a dual-purpose server could reduce customer system time by over one half.

REFERENCES

• 1: Banks, J., Carson, II, J. S., Nelson, B. L., and Nicol, D. M. 2001. Discrete-Event System Simulation. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
• 2: Bahar Biller , Barry L. Nelson, Input modeling: answers to the top ten input modeling questions, Proceedings of the 34th conference on Winter simulation: exploring new frontiers, December 08-11, 2002, San Diego, California
• 3: David M. Brann , Beth C. Kulick, Simulation of customer-focused business processes: simulation of restaurant operations using the restaurant modeling studio, Proceedings of the 34th conference on Winter simulation: exploring new frontiers, December 08-11, 2002, San Diego, California
• 4: Kambiz Farahmand , Alejandro Francisco Garza Martinez, Simulation and animation of the operation of a fast food restaurant, Proceedings of the 28th conference on Winter simulation, p.1264-1271, December 08-11, 1996, Coronado, California, United States [doi>10.1145/256562.256943]
• 5: Field, A., McKnew, M., and Kiessler, P. 1997. A simulation comparison of buffet restaurants: applying Monte Carlo modeling. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 38(6): 68--79.
• 6: Steven L. Jaynes , John O. Hoffman, Discrete event simulation for quick service restaurant traffic analysis, Proceedings of the 26th conference on Winter simulation, p.1061-1066, December 11-14, 1994, Orlando, Florida, United States
• 7: A. K. Kharwat, Computer simulation: an important tool in the fast-food industry, Proceedings of the 23rd conference on Winter simulation, p.811-815, December 08-11, 1991, Phoenix, Arizona, United States
• 8: Robert G. Sargent, Verification and validation: verification and validation of simulation models, Proceedings of the 35th conference on Winter simulation: driving innovation, December 07-10, 2003, New Orleans, Louisiana
• 9: Smith, D. J. 1994. Computer simulation applications in service operations: a case study from the leisure industry. The Service Industries Journal 14(3): 395--408.