question:

full analysis on what does the technology do?

CASE STUDY: PROCESS TECHNOLOGY QB House speeds up the cut 3 It was back in 1996 when Kuniyoshi Konishi, frustrated by having to wait to get his hair cut and then pay over 3,000 yen for the privilege, decided that there must be a better way to offer this kind of service. 'Why not', he said, 'create a no-frills barber's shop where the customer could get a haircut in ten minutes at a cost of 1,000 yen (7) ? He realized that a combination of technology and process design could eliminate all non-essential elements from the basic task of cutting hair. How is this done? Well, first QB House's barbers never handle cash. Each shop has a ticket vending machine that accepts 1,000 yen bills (and gives no change!) and issues a ticket that the customer gives the barber in exchange for the haircut. Second, QB House does not take reservations. The shops don't even have telephones. Therefore, no receptionist is needed, nor anyone to schedule appointments. Third, QB House developed a lighting system to indicate how long customers will have to wait. Electronic sensors under each seat in the waiting area and in each barber's chair track how many customers are waiting in the shop and different coloured lights are displayed outside the shop. Green lights indicate that there is no waiting, yellow lights indicate a wait of about 5 minutes, and red lights indicate that the wait may be around 15 minutes. This system can also keep track of how long it takes for each customer to be served. Fourth, QB has done away with the traditional Japanese practice of shampooing their customers after the haircut to remove any loose hairs. Instead, the barbers use QB House's own 'air wash' system where a vacuum cleaner hose is pulled down from the ceiling and used to vacuum the customer's hair clean. The QB House system has proved so popular that its shops (now over 200) can be found not only in Japan but in many other South East Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Each year almost 4 million customers experience QB House's 10-minute haircuts