Greg Davis, a business major at the University of South Carolina (USC), has opend Six Points Saco (SPS), a specialty subs-taco resturant, at the rim of the USC campus. SPS has grown in popularity over the one 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 below.
Greg is interested in getting a better understanding of the staffing patterns that will be needed in order to operate the restaurant. After taking a couse 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 diffent 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. Assuming that each worker perfoms only one task and each task is performed by only one worker, what is the maximum output capacity from this assembly line? How many employees will be needed to actually accomplish this maximum output capacity?