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(3) That's the answer we felt was most correct.
The number of entry-exit
doors could be adding to congestion, but not as much as the food item
groupings. The replacement of food may be slow, but you haven't been told
that. And, even if replacement were slow, it isn't the main cause of the
congestion.
In Figure 38.1 you can surmise that 'our hero' in his rush to get back
to work quickly, probably broke into the cafeteria serving line in order to
obtain both the small salad and the dessert. Now, of course, he wasn't the
only person who was doing this.
Some people only wanted small or large
salads or desserts and they all had to break through the hot food service
line. In addition, our hero had to cross the entire facility one and a half
times in order to obtain his purchases. That's too much!!
So, the arrangement of items is the major cause of all the congestion.
By the way, how was that cause determined? One way we studied the problem
was by recording the types of food items on each person's tray over a
typical lunch period. Then, we determined the most frequent combinations of
purchases. As a result of these observations, we found that:
(1) Forty percent of the customers wanted hot meals with or without a
small salad and dessert.
(2) Forty-five percent of the customers wanted a short order;
a
prepackaged sandwich. Of those, 30 percent wanted a salad and dessert.
(3) Five percent just wanted either a drink, salad, or dessert; mostly
just a drink.
This information indicates that about 13 percent of the people are
following a pathway similar to our hero.
However, some of these people
entered through the other entryways and, therefore, have traversed the
serving facility twice before checkout.
Figure 38.2 gives you an idea of
the confusion caused by having several entry paths; however, we feel that
some of this will be rectified by a better item arrangement. In addition,
the manager said he wanted all of these passageways to be available.
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