離散イベントシミュレーションを利用した応援作業者を含む業務の効率改善- 外食店舗を考察対象にした事例研究 -

A problem has been recognized that even though the economic activity of a proportion of the service industry in Japan has recently been increasing, productivity remains low. In order to overcome this problem, a large number of improvents in the service industry have been reported based on scientific and technological aspects which have conventionally been used applying into practice on-site experiences and intuition. This research reports a case study that implements improvements in efficiency of a Japanese restaurant franchise that sells carry-out side dishes and lunch-box meals in addition to providing eat-in meals. In order to analyze the amount of sales lost due to a long queue, a queueing model has been built that utilizes a discrete event simulation tool. Based on the derived analysis results, we examined measures for improving the operational efficiency of the restaurant based on the results of this work study, which have been advocated as traditinal industrial engineering methods. Since conventional work studies generally assume that the work to be analyzed is repeatedly performed, it is difficult to analyze operations that multi-tasking workers support on an irregular basis. The point of this research is that the simulation tool and the work study are utilized in combination to investigate the effectivenesses of the support workers and for considering plans to realize improvements. This research may be extended to other systems since the utilization of support workers helps not only in services systems, but also in logistics and production systems. Through this case study, our aim is to expand the possibility of the practical use of industrial engineering method.