Session 8: Benihana – Managing arrival variability, Process Optimization to maximize profit, Revenue

Management, Supply constrained, Demand constrained; Industry Examples, Operations

Scheduling

Process at Benihana:

Bar Dining

Decisions:

Challenge 1: Batch Dining Room Customers

Challenge 2: Design the bar capacity

Challenge 3: Change dining time

Challenge 4: Boost demand with advertising and special programs

Challenge 5: Use different type of batching at different times

Challenge 6: Design your best strategy

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WALGREENS WAITING-QUEUE and Scheduling

One of the areas where I have noted a waiting-que is within our prescription service offered at
the pharmacy. The way the process typically works is that prescriptions can be brought to the
pharmacy from four different routes, pending the type of prescription it is. The prescription can be
phoned in, it can be faxed in, a physical copy dropped off by the person themselves, or it can be sent
over electronically through encrypted electronic transfer (similar to a high security email system).
After the scripts have come to the pharmacy by any route, they’re sorted by time promised in
the “work que.” This que contains every single prescription coming into the pharmacy at all times. The
printer is automatically linked up to provide the pharmacist information as to which prescriptions need to
be checked first, and it also prints those directly to the filling station for the technicians to fill. They fill
the prescriptions based on the timestamp as well.
Some of the issues that have been noticed with this system is that there is constant changing
and shifting in priority. For example, a prescription may have been sent over electronically by the
doctor, but we have no idea when the patient will want to come pick it up unless they call ahead or have
already come to the pharmacy to request it be filled sooner. Therefore, there are many external patient
demands that constantly shift the work que priorities. In addition, issues arise such as drug interactions,
duplicate prescriptions, and insurance issues that may require the prescription to be quarantined within
a separate que. For example, the “TPR que” or third party rejection que is a work que dedicated to
housing the prescriptions that contain insurance issues until they are resolved.
In order to combat a lot of these issues, there have been additional sub-ques that have been
designed to help dictate and progress issues more urgently when they arise. In addition, the company
also employs a third-party vendor that has pharmacists and technicians based off-site. The purpose of
this is to keep the workflow moving by having these pharmacists and technicians not have any external
distractions (phone ringing, helping customers, etc.) and they strictly are dedicated to a que. For
example, one pharmacist might be employed there to simply verify prescriptions all day while another
might just work on insurance issues all day.

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Flow Control at Harrison Steel:

Harrison Steel makes customized large steel castings for primarily the mining and construction
industries.

The finishing processes of steel castings require many different operations to be completed prior to
shipment, including removing excess steel, removing inclusions, upgrade welding, heat treating,
machining to specifications, and painting. Due to large time requirements of some processes, variety of
sizes and requirements of patterns, variations within individual castings of the same pattern, and the
sheer size of our product, we must use batch processing. However, batch processing creates queues at
each additional step, which leads to longer throughput times and delayed processing which can cause
late shipments.

To improve the on time delivery in our finishing processes, we designed the ‘Reverse Scheduler.’
Incorporating data for processing times per pattern, with averages, standard deviations, and some
percentile, along with available work hours and customer requested shipment date, the Reverse
Scheduler calculates the day each process should work on that individual casting. This allows for a
daily printout specifying each casting that is required to be worked, so each process is not just moving
their pile of inventory to the next process. Instead, we try to make it closer to a pull system, starting at
the shipping dock and using the Reverse Scheduler to pull each casting through every process.

We still have to have our batch processes and inventory buffers between each steps, which results in
product being queued up at each process. However, the Reverse Scheduler aims to reduce the
problems associated with queuing and streamline scheduling to reduce queue time and thereby
increase throughput and minimize our work in process inventory.

Question: Explain how reverse scheduling works. Do you see any difficulties in its execution?

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Operations Scheduling Rules:

Example: A loan officer has the following applications to process; in what sequence to process the

jobs?

Job Processing Time

(in order of arrival) (Minutes)
A 45
B 20
C 65
D 30
E 40

Question: How many possible sequences are there?

Question: What is the average flow time for FCFS sequence?

Job Processing Time Flow Time

(in order of arrival) (Minutes) (minutes)
A 45 45
B 20 65
C 65 130
D 30 160
E 40 200

Total Flow Time = 45 + 65 + 130 + 160 + 200 = 600 minutes (sum of flow times for all jobs)

Average Flow Time = 600/5 = 120 minutes

Question: What is the average number of jobs in the system over 200 minutes?
See next page

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 5x45 + 4x20 + 3x65 + 2x30 + 1x40
Average number of jobs = = 3 jobs
200

Application of Little’s Law:

Total Flow Time = 600 minutes

Average Flow Time = 120 minutes

Average Flow Rate = 5 jobs in 200 minutes  1/40 jobs per minute

WIP = Flow Time x Flow Rate = 120 x (1/40) = 3 jobs

Question: How will you sequence the jobs to minimize the total flow time?

Result 1: The SPT rule minimizes the total flow time for a single-machine problem when all jobs are
available at time zero.

Question: Compute the flow measures for the example using the SPT (shortest processing time) rule.

Job Processing Time Flow Time

(Minutes) (minutes)
B 20
D 30
E 40
A 45
C 65

Total Flow Time =

Average Flow Time = = 99 minutes

Average number of jobs = 99 x ( ) = 2.5 jobs

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Question: How to sequence the jobs if they vary in terms of cost they incur for each unit of time they
remain in the system?

Example:

Job Processing Time weight

(Minutes)
A 45 2
B 20 1
C 65 6
D 30 5
E 40 2

What is the cost for the SPT sequence?

Job Processing Time weight Flow Time Weighted flow

(Minutes)
B 20
D 30
E 40
A 45
C 65
(minutes) time
1 20
5 50
2 90
2 135
6 200

Total Cost = $1,920

Question: What would do to improve the sequence?

Weighted Shortest Processing Time Rule: Give priority to the job with the smallest p/w.

Job Processing Time p Weight w p/w

(Minutes)
A 45 2 22.5
B 20 1 20
C 65 6 10.83
D 30 5 6
E 40 2 20

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WSPT Sequence: D – C – B – E - A

Job Processing Time p Weight w Flow Time Weighted

(Minutes) Flow time
D 30 5 30 150
C 65 6 95 570
B 20 1 115 115
E 40 2 155 310
A 45 2 200 400

Total Cost = 150 + 570 + 115 + 310 + 400 = 1,545

Result 2: The WSPT rule minimizes the total weighted flow time for a single-machine problem when all
jobs are available at time zero.

Question: What could be situations in practice when SPT or WSPT sequences will not perform well?

Question: How many jobs are tardy in the SPT sequence for the jobs below? What is the average
tardiness?

Job Processing Time p Due Date

(days)
J1 6 33
J2 2 13
J3 4 6
J4 9 23
J5 3 31

Answer:

Job Processing Time p Due Date Completion Tardiness

(days) Date
J2 2 13
J5 3 31
J3 4 6
J1 6 33
J4 9 23

Question: Find a sequence with no tardy jobs.

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Result 3: Properties of the due date rule

(i) The due date rule minimizes the maximum tardiness.

(ii) If the due date rule has one tardy job then any sequence will have at least one tardy job.

Job Processing Time p Due Date Completion

(days) Date
J3 4 6 4
J2 2 13 6
J4 9 23 15
J5 3 31 18
J1 6 33 24

Challenge Problem: Consider jobs in the table below. Process times for all jobs are 1 hour.
Changeover between families require 4 hours.

Job 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Family 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 1
Code
Due 5 6 12 13 13 19 20 20 26 28
Date

Find a sequence with no tardy jobs.

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Drum-Buffer-Rope Scheduling:

What if bottleneck cannot be located at the beginning of the process? Use of Drum, Buffer and Rope

- Develop a schedule so that is consistent with constraints of the system (determine the drum beat)

- Protect the throughput of the system from the inevitable fluctuations through the use of buffers at
relatively few critical points.

- Tie the production at each resource to the drumbeat. (Rope)

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Please review the answer below and suggest ways to add to the answer.

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