59:005  Engineering Problem Solving-I    Sections 3 and 4

HW 5, 6 & 7

Home Up HW 1 HW 2 HW 3 HW 4 HW 5, 6 & 7 Project 1 Project 2 Project 3 Project 4 Present. Tips

HW 5, 6  and 7  - Process Engineering

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Your task in HW 5, 6 and 7 is to develop an understanding of the processes  used to satisfy customer requirements by an example food service operation, such as McDonalds, Wendy's, Subway, or similar. The aim is to give you some experiences of working as a team and of process engineering.

Process engineering is used to evaluate complex systems consisting of parallel and series processes. You will use a simplified process engineering approach in this task to examine such issues as reducing customer wait time. See HERE for an example application in health care management.

Deliverables

HW5

Sessions on September 19 (Section 3) and September 21 (Section 4) will involve selections of teams of 3 and selections of the fast food restaurants to be examined.

You will work in teams of THREE.

HW5 is concerned with examining the supply side of the restaurant.

For HW5, your task, should you choose to accept it, is to

  1. Visit a restaurant as a team

  2. Generate a list of the components and the products the restaurant produces.

  3. Given these lists you must generate a component-product matrix.  (A simplified example is provided below)

  4. Determine the critical components for both components that are used only in one product as well as the components that are used in many products. 

Therefore you have three items to submit as your team. 

  1. The list of components and products the restaurant produces.

  2. The Component-Product Matrix.

  3. The lists of critical components for both single use and multi-use components.

This should be email to eng_0052@engineering.uiowa.edu as a single Word attachment, with the names of the team members and the restaurant chain clearly identified.  DUE Friday September 28, 5 pm

Hypothetical Restaurant Example (Simplified):

Menu

*Grilled Chicken Cesar Salad- lettuce, grilled chicken, Swiss cheese, Cesar dressing, croutons
*Grilled Chicken Sandwich- bun, grilled chicken, Swiss cheese, and lettuce. 

The list of components is:

Buns
Grilled Chicken
Lettuce
Swiss cheese
Cesar Dressing
Croutons

The Component-Product matrix is:

 

Grilled Chicken Cesar Salad

Grilled Chicken Sandwich

Buns

 

*

Grilled Chicken

*

*

Lettuce

*

*

Swiss cheese

*

*

Cesar Dressing

*

 

Croutons

*

 

Therefore the critical components are:

For single use:

Buns
Croutons
Cesar Dressing

For use in all or most of the products

Grilled Chicken
Swiss cheese
Lettuce 

This means that without the single use components, single menu items we would not be able to make single items, however without the multi-use components we would not be able to make any, or most of the menu items.  This shows that the components are important for different reasons.

 

HW6

Sessions will involve overviews of process modeling  using IDEF3 and HW6.

You will need to do the following:

  1. Determine  a process map (using the IDEF3 representation discussed in class, see HERE) for the process of fulfilling customer orders.
  2. Visit the restaurant at peak and non-peak times, recording at each visit the following:

a. The customer total wait time from entering the queue to receiving their complete order. Take 10 customers at random at both peak and non-peak times. Determine the mean and standard deviation of the customer wait times

b. 10 readings of customer queue length in number of customers for both peak and non-peak times. Determine the mean and standard deviation of the customer queue lengths.

    3.    Describe how the restaurant:

a.  handles product variety and speed of delivery. Describe the overall approach to handing the issues of delivering a variety of products within a short time. For example, Taco Bell mixes together a range of ingredients to produce a wider range of products. These are assembled on receipt of the customer order.

b. reduces customer wait time (both actual and perceived)? Describe how the restaurant reduces the total time that a customer has to wait from the time the customer enters the store to the time that they receive the meal. You can refer to your answer to 1. above for part of your response. For example, Taco Bell has a dedicated order taker that enters the order in the computer system. Product assemblers see the order on a computer screen at their work station and begin assembly.

c. handles bulges in demand?

Include each of these in a single Word document and submit your work as an attached Word file to the  class e-mail account eng_0052@engineering.uiowa.edu  Make sure that you have the names of the team on the top of the document.

  • DUE HW6 Friday October 5, 5:00 pm

HW 7

You will need to produce a PowerPoint file for a 8-10 minute presentation to the class. Include the following slides:

  1. A title slide, giving the name of the restaurant chain examined and the names of the team.
  2. A slide giving a brief overview of the restaurant chain.
  3. A slide showing the main products.
  4. A slide showing the main ingredients.
  5. A slide showing how the the restaurant chain handles product variety.
  6. As slide showing the  process map.
  7. A slide showing how the restaurant chain handles speed of delivery, including your data for customer wait times and queue length.

You can also include a photograph or two  taken of the restaurant. Submit your work as an attached PowerPoint file to the  class e-mail account eng_0052@engineering.uiowa.edu

  • Due HW7 Tuesday October 9, 5:00 pm
  • You will present this material on October 10 (Section 3) or October 12 (Section 4)
  • Complete a peer evaluation of your group to be handed in after your presentation

 

 

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