Scenario 1

A fine dining restaurant which is quite famous. Since it's a trendy restaurant, it is usually very crowded, and for any customers to get a table, they have to wait for a long time. The typical processes at this restaurant are customers' arrival and wait time, making food selections from the menu, ordering the food from a waiter, food preparation (meanwhile customers are waiting), food delivery, payment and checkout. The restaurant's operations manager is looking to improve its operations to reduce customers' waiting time and serve more customers on a given night. He is considering options to incorporate process technologies to improve the restaurant's operation.

Scenario 2

Consider the operations of a printing shop where customers can walk-in and get their documents printed. They can either bring electronic files in a USB flash drive or send an email to a specified address which can then be printed by the staff at the shop. The shop owner, however, is concerned about the costs and wants to reduce the number of staff. He also has to wait for a customer to walk-in to get a printing job. Some customers might have large jobs to print while the others have just a few prints. Even though, there are a number of machines, however, if a large job has started, this results in long waiting times for the next customer on that specific machine. This, in turn can result in losing the customer as he/she can go to another shop for printing. Thus, waiting times may results in high churn rate. The shop owner wants to improve the operations to reduce waiting times and attract more customers/retain existing ones.

Question

• Suggest process technologies to improve efficiency (increase output/reduced time/increased customer engagement) for each scenario with at least three examples and explain why.