Using Simulation to Plan the Utilization of Kitchen Staff

A quick-service restaurant chain wanted to guarantee the freshness of all food items in its hundreds of kitchens. A number of factors complicated this challenge:

1. although each of the kitchens had the same basic setup and equipment, the specific numbers and capabilities of the equipment varied.
2. whenever the restaurant chain introduced a new product, some existing products had to be produced earlier in the day, reducing their shelf life, and others had to be produced later in the day, requiring a reassignment of staff.
3. each kitchen manager had his/her own method of operation, even though there were "prescribed" operating methods.
4. food products had to be transported to retail stores; therefore, all food preparation had to be finished by a certain, unalterable time of the day.

Corporate management realized that simulation could show them every step in each kitchen and allow them to develop work schedules that assured freshness of food products.

CAPI and a major consulting firm met with a master chef to document the implicit set of potentially inconsistent priority rules that were used to schedule work in his kitchen. In this regard, the simulation essentially reproduced the cognitive thought processes of the master chef. The completed simulation, developed with the visual simulation tool Extend+BPR™:

1. encapsulated more than 100 work priority rules,
2. recognized that different groups of kitchen staff undertook different tasks, depending upon the product mix of the day, and
3. when necessary, allowed any staff member to perform two or more tasks simultaneously.

The simulation is set up so that anyone who uses it is not required to know the software used to produce it. He/she simply has to specify the number and types of equipment present in a kitchen, the number of staff members and their duty times, and the volume of each food product to be made. The model then analyzes cycle time for each product and the utilization of both human and machine resources. This information enables a user to identify process bottlenecks and time gaps when new products can be introduced. This model is currently being used by the client for process strategy planning.

The above Processing Activity graph shows when a product is being processed. (Any number greater than zero indicates product is being processed.) A product is considered to be undergoing processing when it is actively being processed, or when it is in a queue waiting to be processed.

The above table of entries allows a user to determine when workers enter the kitchen and when they leave. Note that there is an entry for the skill set of workers--less skilled workers are limited to certain tasks, while skilled workers can perform any task. This allows for optimization of worker utilization and enables cost saving procedures.

Extend+BPR is a trademark of Imagine That!, Inc., San Jose, CA. EVA is a trademark of Stern Stewart Company, NY, NY.