1. Objective
These are your objectives for this study:
The fundamental objective of your study is to collect empirical data to verify if the customer
arrival pattern of a typical retail facilitate would follow that of a Poisson distribution pattern as
the queuing theory in your textbook has predicted.
Another objective is that you will also evaluate the service rate and average waiting times of the
customers spent in the service process provided by the restaurant under study.
Rephrase the above and extend them suitably.
2. Methodology
Your method is going to a selected location of a fast-food chain to observe the arrival pattern and
service data. Much of the information can be found in the project statement I gave you at the
beginning of the project. Of course, you should not copy word by word from what I gave you to
your report. Among others, this section should have the following subsections:
- Schedule – List the dates and time during which the group did the observation. Explain
why the choices. - Members – Explain who were in your group, and what roles were assigned to each of the
group members. You should use a table to help structure your information. You should
insert photos taken of the group during data collection. - Location – Describe the layout of the location of the fast food place, and how you
assigned each member to make sure you would capture accurate data about the arrival
and service time. Use the drawing tool (in MS Word or Power Point) to draw a diagram
showing the layout. Also consider using images from Google satellite pictures to help
show the layout of the facility. - Layout – The layout of the drive-through facility. Include a diagram to explain the
positions of the ordering window, the directions of the traffic.
Equipment – Describe the device and apps used and how the data were measured/counted
(e.g. what did you use as timing instruments? Etc.) and recorded
3. Data
Describe the two types of data:
Talk about the two types of data your group has collected. Did you observe the data directly?
Or you have to follow other steps to derive your data?
How many data points (for each data type) did your group manage to collect? For example, each
5-minute observation of the arrival is a data point for the arrival, the time-in and time-out of
service received by a given car is one data point of the service data). Maybe you can give an
example of the kinds of data you obtained.
You do not need to include the raw data in the body of the report. They should be on EXCEL
and the original source documents should go to Appendix A.
4. Analysis
Discuss what procedure you followed to accomplish the first objective stated in the beginning of
the project report. How did you verify if the actual arrival data distributed in a pattern as
predicted by the textbook? Then discuss the evaluation you did for the second objective.
Analysis for Arrival Pattern (Objective 1)
Explain the purposes of the following columns in the appropriate EXCEL worksheet (Worksheet
named “Pb Dist x”):
- Frequency (F)
- Relative Frequency (RF)
- Poisson columns in the EXCEL workbook, and the reason for plotting the RF and
Poisson columns on the chart.
Explain how the above columns allow you to show the comparison of the actual and expected
arrival patterns.
Analysis for Service Capacity (Objective 2)
Start your discussion by first talking about your evaluation of the fast food facility in terms of
their average arrival rate (λ), average service rate (μ), utilization rate (ρ), and capacity surplus.
You also discuss whether it was crowded (e.g. the use of Cs and Cw to how your measurement,
and their interpretation). You should also evaluate the facility in terms of the time that an
average customer would need to spend in the whole process and in waiting.
Explain conceptually what Cs, Cw, Ts, and Tw mean and the formulas you used to calculate
them (provide and explain the formulas). What did they tell about the drive-through you had
studied?
Use short and independent paragraphs for each of the above (λ, μ, ρ, Capacity Surplus, Cs, Cw,
Ts, and Tw). Do not copy the results from the EXCEL worksheet and paste here yet. You will
report the findings in the next section.
5. Result / Findings
Discuss the results of your evaluation based on your data and the use of the various formulae.
Arrival Pattern (Objective 1)
Describe what you see in the chart where the actual and expected arrival patterns are compared.
Are they similar? Where do they show similarities? Are they at different? Where do they show
the variances? We have discussed how you should describe the similarities and differences in a
specific manner.
You have been asked to pencil down on the data collect forms comments and observations you
had on each day of the study. Is there anything (i.e. your observations during data collection)
extraordinary that may contribute to the differences in the actual arrival pattern?
Service Capacity (Objective 2)
Discuss the calculated average arrival rate (λ), average service rate (μ), utilization rate (ρ), and
capacity surplus. Discuss the result of the calculated Crowdedness (Cs and Cw) and Service
Time (Ts and Tw). You may find it convenient to copy the correctly formatted EXCEL
spreadsheet portion (the one that has the analysis) and paste it here.
6. Conclusion
Provide a summary of the following:
- The objective of this study
- The study itself, such as the name of the restaurant, what the group did there,
for how long, what kinds of data collected, how the data have been used,
what aspects of the restaurant the group was assessing, etc. - At the very end, you need to respond to the questions raised in the Objective
section. Did the findings provide enough information for you to answer the
questions raised in the Objective?
Remember: Your conclusion has to state if the two questions asked in the
Objective Section have been answered.
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