Description
In early December 2016, the owner of the Asian Grill restaurant in Henderson, Nevada, noticed that the restaurant had busy nights where customers left due to long wait times, yet there were empty seats due to small groups occupying large tables. She had a proposed new table layout before her and had to evaluate whether this would allow the restaurant to seat more customers on her busiest nights (Thursday to Saturday), or whether a different table layout would be even better.
Learning Objective
This case provides students with an opportunity to model a complicated yet common service-industry problem. From a technical side, it presents a common, easy-to-understand situation that can be used for creating and developing a queuing simulation. The case is intended for use in either an advanced undergraduate business course or an MBA environment. The content requires familiarity with modelling and analytics content (queuing simulations). More advanced students can use this case to practice simulation optimization through the use of third-party software such as @RISK. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to ·understand how modelling techniques can be used in operations; ·identify a variety of situations where modelling can be useful; andexplain the benefits of variance-reduction techniques.