Question

A small restaurant is creating a schedule for its wait staff to meet its expected weekly demand. The staff requirements have been determined to be:

day	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
staff	1	2	2	3	5	5	3

The restaurant would like its staff to have two consecutive days off, with a preference given to Saturday and Sunday, or one of those two days if the pair is not possible.

(a) Create a schedule to meet the staff requirements. How many wait staff are needed?

(b) The restaurant believes regular maintenance of the kitchen is important. The kitchen staff would like 1 extra worker whenever they perform maintenance. On which days of the week should maintenance be scheduled?

(c) The restaurant wants to create a ‘kid’s day’ (young children eat for free) to attract customers on days with low demand. Given your staff schedule, which day is best to implement this promotion.

Answer 1

a) since maximum demand for staff on any day = 5 hence 5 wait staff are needed.

schedule for staff is drawn below where 0 represents days off and 1 represents their working day.

Total wait = number of workers available to work

Extra wait = number of workers available to work - staff requirement for that day

b) since The kitchen staff would like 1 extra worker whenever they perform maintenance, hence maintenance should be scheduled whenever extra wait is available i,e either on Monday or Sunday.

c) The restaurant wants to create a ‘kid’s day’ (young children eat for free) to attract customers on days with low demand hence Monday is the best because it has lowest demand and extra wait available.