Pantry Shopper is a supermarket in suburban Philadelphia, where competition among supermarkets is fierce. Pantry Shopper management feels that because prices are so competitive, shoppers will choose one supermarket over another due to the services offered. For this reason, Pantry Shopper prides itself on its in-store bakery; its deli counter, which the store claims offers more varieties of meats, cheeses, and salads than any competitor; and its meat counter, where the store provides custom cuts of meat and poultry.
The store has been in business in the same location since 1953. Over the years, the store has had different owners and different managers, each with his or her own ideas on the management and design of the store. The new manager, Beth Smith-Danton, is no exception. Beth felt that by providing shoppers with faster, more efficient service, she might be able to improve the store's competitive position and market share. To this end, she has already moved check approval from the main desk to the cash register. She has increased the limit on cash back from checks from $20 above the purchase amount to $50 above the purchase amount. She has instituted a delivery service to make shopping more convenient, especially for senior citizens.
To this point, however, Beth has not changed the checkout system itself. The last major remodeling of the checkout system occurred in 1982. Since then, the demand at the store has increased and the technology of the cash registers has changed. Beth needs to use her square footage efficiently in redesigning the checkout system. She knows that she has to design the system for peak usage but does not want to overdesign the system–that is, to install too many cash registers and lanes. It's not that Beth is concerned about the unnecessary expenses, because the registers, scanners, and conveyors represent a fixed cost that would be spread over many shoppers. Wasted space is a far greater concern.
Planning for a major redesign, Beth collected data at her store on several consecutive Saturday mornings. She noticed that customers arrived at the checkout at a rate of approximately 100 per hour. Fully 20 percent of the customers had 10 items or less. Those people took about 2 minutes to serve on average, while customers with more than 10 items took about 4 minutes to process. Beth expects service time to improve when universal price code readers are installed in the new design. Help Beth with her design for the system.