Question

Read the below article and answer the following questions, in regards to Operations and Supply Chain management:

1) A comparative analysis of two systems (One with a single line and tree servers and a second with 3 waiting lines and three servers) found that the first is approximately three times more effective. Provide and illustrate three reasons for this difference in performance (Keep in mind service rate variability, customers and employers behavior.

2) Amusement park priority in term of customer satisfaction is to decrease the customers waiting time. Provide and explain two approaches that Amusement parks use to improve the customers experience from a waiting perspectives.   

Article: Why You Always Seem to Get Stuck in the Slowest Line

Liz Klimas (http://www.theblaze.com/author/liz­klimas/) July 16, 2014 10:27 am

You’ve taken a peek into nearly every line at the grocery store and selected the one that you think will get you checked out the fastest. Then you see someone in the next line over, who queued up two minutes after you, heading out the door well before all of your goods have even been bagged.

Feel like this happens to you every time you pick a line? There’s probably a reason. "When you’re selecting among several lines at the grocery store, the odds are not in your favor. Chances are, the other line really is faster,” Adam Mann for Wired wrote (http://www.wired.com/2014/07/whatsup­with­the­other­line­is­always­faster/). “Mathematicians who study the behavior of lines are called queueing theorists, and they’ve got the numbers to prove this. Their models also underlie a diverse set of modern problems, including traffic engineering, factory design, and Internet infrastructure. At the same time, queueing theory provides a fairer way to checkout at the store. The only problem is that many customers don’t like it.” Based on queuing theory, which Mann goes into detail about (http://www.wired.com/2014/07/whatsup­with­the­other­line­is­always­faster/), there is no special trick to ensure you will always be in the fastest line possible. "A grocery store tries to have enough employees at the checkout lines to get all their customers through with minimum delay. But sometimes, like on a Sunday afternoon, they get super busy. Because most grocery stores don’t have the physical space to add more checkout lines, their system becomes overwhelmed,” he wrote. “Some small interruption — a price check, a particularly talkative customer — will have downstream effects, holding up the entire line behind them. "If there are three lines at the store, these delays will happen randomly at different registers,” Mann continued. “Think about the probability. The chances of your line being that fastest one are only one in three. Which means you have a two­thirds chance of not being in the fastest line. So it’s not just in your mind: Another line is probably moving faster than yours.”
To take care of at least part of this problem, queuing theorists suggest having all customers stand in a single long line and then each clerk serves the next person as they become available. This is similar to the method employed at several Trader Joe’s and T.J. Maxx stores, as well as many fast­food chains, for example. "With a serpentine line, a long delay at one register won’t unfairly punish the people who lined up behind it. Instead, it will slow everyone down a little bit,” Mann wrote. Unfortunately, Mann noted, many customers actually prefer to test their luck rather than stand in one long line. Traffic lanes come with a host of other issues that can make one seem slower than the other. One of them, Tom Stafford for the BBC wrote, is the “universe­victim theory.”
“When my lane is moving along I’m focusing on where I’m going, ignoring the traffic I’m overtaking. When my lane is stuck I’m thinking about me and my hard luck, looking at the other lane. No wonder the association between me and being overtaken sticks in memory more,” he said, explaining the one of the psychological aspects (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130827­why­other­queues­move­faster) that plays into lines.
Tom Vanderbilt, author of “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do” who wrote of the “other lane” issue, among other observations of how traffic has shaped us, agreed with this psychological aspect in a Q&A (http://freakonomics.com/2008/06/05/hows­my­driving­a­qa­with­the­author­of­traffic/).

“Given the general findings that humans are more sensitive to losses than gains, it doesn’t seem a stretch to imagine that this sense of being passed — of the other lane being faster — would stick out in our brains. All you have to do is pick out a benchmark car in the adjoining lane to see how often we fall for this illusion,” he said (http://freakonomics.com/2008/06/05/hows­my­driving­a­qa­with­the­authorof­traffic/). “I’ve seen these cars pass well out of vision, only to find myself passing them again minutes later. Part of the reason this seesaw effect is happening in the first place is because of all the drivers ahead thought they could get a better deal, and basically ended up just shifting the equilibrium around temporarily.”

Answer 1

Analysis of two systems:

(One with a single line and tree servers and a second with 3 waiting for lines and three servers)

The options one with a single line and option 2 three servers is faster than a second with three waiting lines and the three servers.

Three reasons for this difference in performance as follows:

• The efficiency of the teller and the time taken at the window: In option 2 the delay or more time took on one customer and efficiency of the teller will impact the entire line and delay the work for the entire line. In option, 1 if the customer is taking longer time the subsequent customer moves to the next window. The two customer’s activity is not related.
• Random failure of a teller system: In option 2 a failure of teller system will impact the entire line and increase the with time but in option 1 the customers will keep moving to the next available teller and will not be impacted by a random failure.
• The service points are staggered so the problem of the single slow customer is evenly distributed amongst all those who are waiting.

The two approaches that Amusement parks use to improve the customer's experience from a waiting perspective are as follows:

• Appointing a service leader to coordinate an employee-customer relationship: The perceived wait time is reduced when a customer is greeted and his request is heard as soon as he enters. The customer feels important and feels he is looked after by the amusement park. Then the employee directs him to the queue he should join as per his choice of rides.
• Engage the customer: The customers at the ticketing are kept busy with short digital films which are playing next to the queues. The short films can be about the next upcoming movie, some videos, entertaining advertisements, etc. The purpose is to keep the customers engaged.

To conclude the customers should feel welcome, looked after and his needs are being met by the employees.