Facilities and Material Handling Management Process Improvement of a Dunkin'Donuts Retail Store

Abstract

[EN] The growing economy in the United States and across the world has birthed a fast pace life for millions of people. In response, fast‐food chains are working vigorously to meet the demand of consumers. Fast‐food industries are hiring engineers to design good quality food and faster service. Among these industries is Dunkin Donuts company. Currently Dunkin Donuts is growing popularity worldwide. They supply fast food at an affordable price. Although there is a large demand, Dunkin Donuts could be declining due to other competitors. Moreover, some of its stores are unable to match the service and quality of other fast‐food places. In an effort to remain highly profitable, Dunkin Donuts is working with researchers to improve store conditions. In this project, we seek to identify problems with service, products and facility layout. In this way, we have found three main problems where we have focused: First, in the first visit to the store we were surprised for the large quantity of donuts, approximately 30%, that the store through away everyday attending to its business policy, it means, the store has to throw out the unsold donuts at the end of the day. For this reason, the first goal for us was to reduce this percentage as much as possible. To tackle this problem, we assume that donuts are a perishable product. For this reason, it can be compared with the Newsvendor Problem which is the basis on which we have relied. Thank to this methodology we achieve a reduction of 10% in quantity of donuts thrown away. The second problem which has been observed is the time that customers have to wait in the line depending on the time of the day. To solve this problem the team was focused on which the most common ordered products are, arriving to the conclusion that donuts and coffee are these ones. Through a time study of the service time for the different kind of products, the team arrived to the conclusion that the possibility of a priority line for donuts and coffee would be a good idea. This idea has been studied by a simulation in the Arena Software comparing the current system with the proposed one. The conclusion to this study is that, in general, with the proposed system the waiting time of the customer is almost the 50% than in the current system. The third and last problem observed are the inefficiencies in the layout of the store which affects to customers and employees. Furthermore, due to the changes proposed to the second problem observed (the priority line system), it is necessary that the store’s layout changes so a new store’s layout has been studied in this part of the project. To face these problems, different tasks are studied through a MOST analysis which breaks down these tasks into individual motion elements. In this way, it is easier to see how the tasks can be improved. Following this methodology the team has got a new layout which reduces the movements of the employees, and it has also proposed new equipment which improves the service time of different tasks. In conclusion, these problems discussed about the weakness in this store can be reflected in the customers and even employees satisfaction supposing an important cost for the store. The solutions proposed in this project will contribute to reduce the costs of the store, it means, they will improve the store in terms of effectiveness and efficiency