Problem 1 (a) On average, how many minutes are customers currently waiting in line before initiating service at station 1? (b) On average, how many minutes would customers wait in line before initiating service at station 1? (c) What is the total time a customer spends in the system? (d) How is the line performing compared with its best case, practical worst case, and worst case? (e) How would you improve the performance of the line?

Analyzing the Operations Although Escoba was thrilled to see his business thriving, he was worried about customers leaving due to the long wait times. So immediately after walking into the restaurant, Escoba grabbed a notepad and went to the floor to understand what was going on. He spent the night observing each of the five employees involved in the burrito-making process and taking data on a set of sample orders. His hope was that the timemeasurement data would help him increase the number of burritos per hour that the burrito-making process could yield while at the same time maintaining a high-capacity utilization for the process (Exhibit 1). The Burrito-Making Process When customers walked into Pancho's Burritos, the first thing they encountered was a single-file line of customers that led to the service counter. Based on his own experience, Escoba had set a target wait time for customers of 10 minutes or less. In general, he found that customers would start to exit if the wait time was longer than this. Due to competitive pressures from a new pizza-by-the-slice restaurant that had just opened up across the street, however, Escoba eventually lowered his goal wait time to 5 minutes or less. At the front of the line, the customer reached the service counter and the burrito-making process. There were five sequential stations: burrito selection, protein selection, toppings selection, packing, and checkout.: Throughout the process, customers watched as someone worked on their customized burrito. Once the process was complete, customers could take their orders to go or they could sit down to enjoy their burritos in the restaurant. At peak hours, Escoba estimated that demand was around 92 burritos per hour. Exhibit 1 Pancho's Burritos The Burrito-Making Process T_-1_-1_- 3