After reviewing the waiting line analysis of Problem 12, the manager of Pete’s Market wants to consider one of the following alternatives for improving service. What alternative would you recommend? Justify your recommendation.
a. Hire a second person to bag the groceries while the cash register operator is entering the cost data and collecting money from the customer. With this improved single-channel operation, the service rate could be increased to 30 customers per hour.
b. Hire a second person to operate a second checkout counter. The two-channel operation would have a service rate of 20 customers per hour for each channel.