Tomomi Nonaka

A study on operator allocation method considering the process of Skill proficiency in cell manufacturing systems

The cell manufacturing system of a labor concentration type is still in the important position of the manufacturing industry in spite of the increase in automation system. Therefore, an effective skill education is required for their operation. In this study, the proposal and verification of the allocation planning, which focuses on the process of skill proficiency, is carried out by developing expert operators in flexible multi-operator cells.

Facility Layout Planning of Central Kitchen in Food Service Industry: Application to the Real-Scale Problem

Central kitchen is a food producing factory to improve productivity in the food-service industry, to pursue scale-merit by aggregation of tasks in multiple stores into one place. However, the central kitchen is still labor intensive production environment because of trade-off between quality and quantity of products, so that the handicraft of skilled workers cannot be eliminated. In addition, there are many part-time workers as well as full-time ones, as a result, operators can be also uncertain factors. Furthermore, customer demand forecast is also difficult according to not only susceptible to weather and seasonal variation but also influence from irregular events held around the restaurant. Due to such characteristics of the food service industry, it is also difficult to plan proper facility layout of the central kitchen to achieve both optimality and adaptability to the complexity. In this study, a new facility layout planning method of the central kitchen is proposed, where not only optimization but simulation is also adopted; flow of workers as well as products can be considered simultaneously. Computer experiments in which the proposed method is applied to the real-scale problem are conducted to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.

ColPMan: A Serious Game for Practicing Collaborative Production Management

This paper describes the development of a serious game, named ColPMan, which enables practitioners, undergraduate students, and graduate students in the industrial engineering and management fields to experientially learn dynamic decision-making skills for collaborative production management in a large-scale make-to-order company. In ColPMan, a team of players collaboratively operates the virtual in-house supply chain of a manufacturer, in order to maximize profit (i.e., game score). The supply chain is composed of a headquarters that accepts orders from customers, an upstream factory producing materials, and three downstream factories processing materials into products. Each player is assigned to one of the sites and makes production and delivery plans for that site. Since the operations of different sites within the chain are related to one another, the players need to learn to develop a shared strategy and act in a coordinated way with regard to various environmental disturbances in order to obtain a high score. The developed game has been tested in an undergraduate classroom exercise, with a positive response from students.

A Customer Satisfaction Model for Effective Fast Fashion Store Service

This paper proposed a customer satisfaction model to effectively manage staff priorities and service at fast fashion stores. An evaluation model of customer satisfaction was developed through multiple regression analysis of two measures. The first measure considered the difference between actual times and perceived times of customers’ behavioural processes while shopping to determine whether or not customers felt dissatisfied. The second measure identified factors which led to customer frustration through a multiple choice questionnaire. The proposed model was applied to multi-agent simulation to compare customer satisfaction levels.

A Serious Game for Eliciting Tacit Strategies for Dynamic Table Assignment in a Restaurant

This paper deals with the table assignment problem in a restaurant, where groups of customers arrive without reservations. The problem is basically a combinatorial optimization problem of finding a desirable match between the groups of customers and the possible sets of combinable tables, but has dynamic as well as subjective aspects. This makes full automation of the task unsuitable and hence it is usually carried out by an individual based on informal and unspecified strategies. This paper proposes a serious game approach for eliciting effective tacit strategies for handling the dynamic table assignment task in a restaurant. The developed game is a single player game, where the player carries out the table assignment task in a virtual restaurant. In the game, customers randomly arrive at the restaurant in groups of different sizes and wait in a room to be seated. The player can at any time assign a set of tables in the restaurant dining room to any of the waiting customer groups, if all the tables to be assigned are vacant and combinable. However, if dissatisfaction due to waiting reaches a pre-specified limit, the customer group will leave the waiting room without having a meal in the restaurant. A prototype of the game is developed and laboratory experiments are conducted using it. As a result, it is confirmed that the score of the proposed game depends on the player’s experience in performing the table assignment task in a real restaurant. Hence, the proposed game and the actual table assignment task have at least some characteristics in common. Further, the players, on average, can improve their game scores through applying their own strategies, and the strategies can be characterized through the data obtained from the game.

Employee Satisfaction Analysis in Food Service Industry – Resultant of Questionnaire to the Restaurant Staff

This study analyzed employee satisfaction in the food service industry by looking at the results of a questionnaire delivered to the restaurant staff. Question items were divided into seven question categories: work environment, work efficiency and service quality, relationship with bosses, rules, education system, attitude and motivation toward work, and interest in multi-skills development. A Japanese restaurant chain located in Japan is selected as an analysis target. Satisfaction structures and the differences among the attributes of work position, employee pattern, age group, and length of continuous employment were analyzed with correlation analysis and covariance structure analysis.

Using a Cooking Operation Simulator to Improve Cooking Speed in a Multiproduct Japanese Cuisine Restaurant

This study was conducted to improve the cooking speed in multiproduct Japanese cuisine restaurants using a cooking operation simulator. Traditionally, restaurants improve cooking speed through menu and cooking operation simplification because the cooking speed depends strongly on customer satisfaction and productivity. In recent years, customer requirements for restaurant menus have become diverse. A restaurant must evolve the menu and cooking operations to adapt to customer needs. Cooking systems of multiproduct restaurants can produce diverse menus, but the cooking speed is low. They should improve the cooking speed to improve customer satisfaction and productivity.

A Model of Dynamic Scheduling of Restaurant Operations Considering the Order and Timing of Serving Dishes.

Japanese and French restaurants provide dishes in an order specified by tradition; for example, from appetizers to desserts. On the other hand, customers in a Japanese-style bar or casual restaurant often order several dishes at one time. They may have implicit preferences as to the order and timing of serving the dishes according to the characteristics of the foods and their situations. For example, light meals that can be served quickly tend to be served first to cater to customer desires. This paper proposes a dynamic scheduling approach for restaurant service operations considering the order and timing of serving dishes. Customers specify their requests for the order of serving dishes to floor staff, and then a model configures cooking and serving schedules dynamically according to the customers’ requests. In this paper, three models are proposed. In the first model, cooked dishes are stocked in a storage space until the customers’ requirements for the order have been satisfied. The second model coordinates cooking schedules by considering the order sequence, cooking time, and lot assignment to adapt to customer requirements. The third model combines the first and second models.

Collaborative Process Planning on Route Market Platform

In order for a group of manufacturing SMEs to become competitive as a team, each of them should have its own strength and the strength must be united into an appealing process plan suitable for the specification of every manufacturing order. Since the detailed knowledge on the capability of each SME is owned only by the SME itself and often difficult to be disclosed to public, it is a big challenge how to properly incorporate the strength into the process plan without a single planner who knows the details of the capabilities of all SMEs. This paper calls this task as collaborative process planning, and proposes how to refine and utilize the platform of Route Market, which was originally developed by the authors for geographical route recommendation service, for the task.

A Framework for Mathematical Analysis of Collaborative SCM in ColPMan Game

ColPMan is a multi-player serious game through which a team of players can experientially learn how to collaboratively operate a virtual in-house supply chain. In this game, the problem of operating the whole chain is divided into sub-problems and each of them is addressed by a different player. While playing the game, the sub-problems distributed to the players can be linked to one another in a certain way through communication among them. This paper provides a framework for mathematically analyzing the effects of (the way the sub-problems are linked through) the communication. This also clarifies what the players should discuss and learn in the debriefing session.