Using simulations in the optimisation of fast food service delivery

Abstract

This research focuses on the UK fast food retailers and the importance of the service delivery systems in fast food burger outlets. Waiting time and the impact it has on customer perceptions of service quality is considered alongside a typology of customers, based on their waiting characteristics. A number of critical components that affect customer queuing and crowding emerge as an inherent part of the production-line service system. The paper asserts that the cost-effective maximisation of service speed is likely to be the primary consideration for management, and lead to business success. When using conventional research approaches, such as tracking studies and queuing theory, these arguably offer burger restaurant managers a rather simplistic analysis. The research concludes, therefore, that modern computer-based simulation packages offer a way of measuring most of the influencing factors, and is an opportunity for leading fast food retailers to optimise their (total) product positioning.

An Empirical Study on Voice-Enabled Web Applications

“…Queuing and crowding are two major reasons of considerable dissatisfaction. 7 In Taiwan, counter and online ordering are two popular methods of ordering fast food. We built a voiceenabled system prototype to provide meal order service to help users understand and evaluate the voice-enabled Web system.…”

Impact of consumption aspirations and brand knowledge on customer decision making: Evidence form fast food industry of Pakistan

“…As clients have the power so it is very important for the fast food chains who work over the home delivery offers. Research study showed that the system optimization and less time consuming home deliveries makes the customers to purchase the product and to repeat their purchase decisions (Church & Newman, 2000). Although the purchase decision of customers in favor of the product is very important for the marketers but more important thing is the repurchase decision of customers.…”

The Use of Acceptable Customer Waiting Times for Capacity Management in a Multistage Restaurant

“…These studies incorporated queuing models to capture waiting time as a measure of system performance in capacity optimization models. Among few studies on managing actual waiting time in the hospitality industry, Church and Newman (2000) and Lee and Lambert (2007) explored waiting time management that focused on labor requirements in improving restaurant systems.…”

“…Thompson (2002Thompson ( , 2003 attempted to find the optimal seating configuration for customer party sizes in a restaurant to achieve a maximum revenue per available seat hour. Church and Newman (2000) analyzed the number of employees, process times at each sales point, customer arrival rate, and queue behavior to increase the speed of service in a fast-food restaurant. Waiting lines in a multistep restaurant setting were found to be a function of the bottleneck, or limiting resource (Fung, 2001).…”