pancho's burrito case study $($UVA DArden$)$ : currently there are $5$ steps, the total flowtime being $129$ seconds$/$burrito$.$ The owner wants to limit the customer wait time to $5$ minutes or less. The peak hour demand is around $92/$ burritos per hour. How to improve the process to increase number of burrito produced per hour? Attached are current $($old$)$ set up as summarized from the case, and $2$ key case pages. Step $5$: Checkout

The last step of the process was the customer checkout. After the order was packed and ready to go$,$ a

burrito specialist calculated the total cost of the order and received the payment from the customer. With the

current staffing plan, a dedicated burrito specialist worked the cash register. One out of three customers paid

with cash, which took an average of $20$ seconds. The remaining customers paid using credit or debit cards, and

since most transactions were under $20$ dollars, there was no need for a signature. Processing a card payment

took on average $5$ seconds per customer. Therefore, the specialist could complete a customer checkout every

$10$ seconds on average.

After about an hour of taking data, Escoba was frustrated. There was still a long line of customers. He was

pleased with the effort of his employees, but their service times were highly variable. Often, workers would

leave their stations to refill inventory needed for the production line. In addition, some workers had periods of

idle time while others were constantly busy. Escoba wanted to explore the possibility of increasing capacity by

balancing the tasks in the burrito$-$making process. The only constraints that limited the flexibility of balancing

the tasks were that the first step of the process had to be setting up the base and that the last two steps of the

process must be packing and then checkout.

While collecting production times, Escoba had noticed the effect that customer arrivals could have on the

line's length. Customers did not arrive in a nice, steady stream, but in clumps that tended to strain the process.

Curious to understand customer behavior and the operation of the burrito$-$making process as a whole, Escoba

decided to gather more data, specifically focusing on customer arrival times $($Exhibit $2).$ Escoba hoped to use

this information to understand the effect of variability on the production process.

Next Steps

Once the restaurant closed for the night and the burrito specialists switched from making burritos to

cleaning up$,$ Escoba went back to his office. He grabbed a marker and started writing down ideas for managing

staffing at the restaurant on his whiteboard. He wondered if there might be a way to staff the restaurant

differently in order to better utilize his employees and serve more people with fewer workers, or to reduce the

number of workers during periods of lower demand. Question $-$please breakdown this case into sub questions and show steps.