Our Guest Post today comes from Prof. Howard Weiss, at Temple University. Howard is the developer of the POM for Windows and Excel OM problem solving software that we provide free with our OM texts.
I went on vacation last week to Florida. I enjoyed seeing Barry in Orlando for dinner and loved taking my grandson to the theme parks. But as an Operations Management professor, I can’t help but to be alert to possible system improvements.
Layout: I stayed at a hotel that had a buffet breakfast that was arranged in a straight line. The first process was a milk dispenser followed by the cereal followed by the bowls. You do not need to be an operations expert to realize that this will cause problems. And it did!
Aggregate Planning: The hotel’s breakfast capacity was based on a normal day where demand was spread out from 6:30-9:30. However, on this rainy day, guests were in no rush to visit the amusement parks and there was a large demand for breakfast from 9:00-9:30. The hotel could have prepared more food in the previous production period of 8:30-9:00 and held it until 9:00 to lessen the backlog.
Reliability: At another hotel the extension cord that was used for the waffle irons became defective. The kitchen had no backup extension cord.
Process Design: At the Miami Airport the moving walkways have signs that say “Stand on right, walk on left.” This made the process much more efficient than other moving walkways or the DC Metro that do not have the signage. For an interesting read see http://www.welovedc.com/2010/07/20/dc-mythbusting-stand-to-the-right/
Operating Costs: We saw an escalator that was not functioning. This reminded me that many escalators in Europe run only when someone approaches them. This saves energy. If an escalator is not running in the US it is because it is broken.
Safety: When we exited the plane we saw that a passenger who had been sitting in the emergency row, now on a wheelchair by the plane’s exit, waiting to be wheeled away. You would think that the airline’s information system would flag a passenger who needs a wheelchair from sitting in the exit row.