OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
Read the case study description below. Develop and run Arena simulation model for the current system.
Analyse the results and then modify the system to identify optimal level of resources required. Note that you are only allowed to modify capacity.
Write a technical report (1,500 words ±10%) that analyses the current performance of the process, conducts justifiable experiments and makes a clear and justified recommendations for the company.
Case Study
You have recently started a new job as a Junior Process Analyst in a large hospitality
business. Your manager has asked you to investigate one of the branches in their chain of coffee shops. The branch has received negative customer feedback and the sales have been declining. Your manager wants to understand if there are any underlying process related issues in the branch and how these could be resolved. Your manager wants you to:
1) Gain understanding of the process structure (completed)
2) Measure and collect relevant data from the process (completed)
3) Build a model of the process using Arena simulation software
4) Simulate the current process and analyse the results to gain understanding of its
performance
5) Experiment with the capacity of the system to identify how the process could be
improved
6) Write a report to your manager summarising your findings (+/- 1,500 words)
You have completed Steps 1 & 2 and the information you have collected is summarised below.
London Airport Terminal 2 branch of Coffee Adventures Shop is located at airport
departure lounge. The key information about the process is as follows: information is as follows:
Service process has the following steps:
1) Take customer order and payment Tria(0.5,1,2) – requires one cash machine and one employee,
2) Deliver the order to the drink machines Constant(0.5) – requires one employee,
3) Make the purchased drink Tea: Tria(0.5,1,3), Coffee: Tria(1,2,6) or Hot chocolate:
Tria(1.5,3,5) – requires the appropriate machine (one Tea Pot, one Coffee Machine
or one Hot Chocolate Machine) and one employee,
4) deliver the drink to the customer Expo(0.5) – requires one employee. Same employee completes the order from Taking order to Delivering the drink.
5% of orders are identified as faulty after delivery to customer and need to be
remade (order needs to be redelivered to drink machines by the same employee
who delivered it to the customer) with delay of Expo(0.5), purchased drink remade
(same drink) and then redelivered to customer with resources and times as
specified earlier.
Company has one machine for making tea, one for making coffees and one for hot
chocolates. Each machine can only be used to make one drink at a time.
Company has two cash machines and two employees
Company sells three different types of hot drinks; 30% of customers order Tea, 50% order coffee and 20% order hot chocolate.
Time between customer arrivals follow Expo(3) distribution
The number of customers arriving at the same time follows Poisson(1) distribution
When a customer arrives and if both cash machine and employee are idle the
customer will be served immediately, otherwise the customer waits in a First-In-
Firsts-Out (FIFO) queue
Each customer orders only one drink.
All times are given in minutes.
The system starts at time zero minutes with no products present and the machine(s) idle.
Run the simulation for 120 hours.
