Learning_Curve

Introduction A learning curve is basically the relationship between the cumulative number of units that will be produced and the time it will take to produce the units. It can be seen as the individual obtains the skills to work the process and by repeating the process many times. The individual will be using his/her own experience to gain the experience while learning the processes. There are three assumptions that the learning curve will be based on what the book say’s: 1. The amount of time required to complete a given task or the unit of a product will be less each time.” 2. “The unit time will decrease at a decreasing rate.” 3. “The reduction in time will follow a predictable pattern” (Chase, 2006, pg 135). The Table A shows the different time lines for the Pizza Store Layout for the different scenarios provided. As the table shows as the weeks go on the average wait time in minutes goes down more than twice the time. The average queue length decreases as the weeks go on as well. Learning curves can be utilized by many means like the table that is created in Table A or by other methods (Simulations, Pizza Shop, 2010). The table shows that the Pizza simulation process there is an improvement in the waiting time for the customers beginning with the first week until the eighth week. The time it decreased is from 11.94 to 5.21 minutes. It looks like the process was helped by taking the people out of waiting which would have caused a jam up of customers waiting to be seated in the waiting area. What needs to happen in this Pizza Restaurant would be to increase the tables from 14 to possibly 20 tables. Mario would be able to increase his take-in average of approximately 30% more. Other ways to increase his volume of sales would be to increase his takeout orders as well. Improvements in the profits can be seen in Table A from the first week to the eighth week of $693 to $1,168. This is result of helping the customers wait time and eliminating the time they are waiting in the lobby to be seated at the Pizza Shop. We can also see that the analysis of curve will show that the amount of profit has almost doubled in the eight weeks that this scenario has been created. For the next scenario the slope of the curve can be calculated to show what it will be for each week. If we calculated the eighth week by the first week we can see the slope of the curve. Calculation: (1,168 – 693) / (8 – 0) = 475 / 8 – 0 = 59.375. This 59.375 is the profit of increase of dollars each week. Next the percentage will need to be calculated: 59.375 / 1,168 = 0.050 or approximately 0.05 per week. Change the 0.05 to a percentage of 5% or 95% learning curve for each week. This will also be an estimate the weekly improvement that Mario can use for future improvements in his Pizza Shop. If Mario would create tables to show the different scenarios would help him to see how it would help to stop customers from balking from his Pizza Shop without being served. The first showed that the restaurant had the highest utilization of 99.56% and 37 groups of four had left the shop without being served. If Mario would set up the process in different scenarios and lay them out in front of himself, he would see how to utilize his Pizza Shop better. After changing the tables the utilization had started to decrease and the profit started to increase. Looking at the different scenario processes Mario would notice that the wait staff and the kitchen staffs would be not utilized to their fullest. This would be costing Mario in time and money. Other processes that Mario would need to look at would be the lost in sales due to the balking of the customers.