Improvement Strategy at Tim Hortons Inc.

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary
Current Situation
Objectives
References

Executive Summary

The purpose of the report is to provide the results of developing and evaluating the improvement strategy for Tim Hortons Inc., basing on the credible simulation model. Tim Hortons Inc. is a fast food chain which specialises in serving breakfasts with branded coffee and donuts and lunches with a great selection of soups and sandwiches. Lunches are discussed as the peak hours in the restaurants.

The peak hours during the lunch time at the definite Tim Hortons restaurant are the focus of this study. The proposed and evaluated scenarios can be considered as not optimal or appropriate for checking during the other hours or at the other Tim Hortons restaurants which differ in their arrival patterns.

To develop the credible model and evaluate several alternative scenarios to choose the most effective strategy for implementing in this Tim Hortons restaurant, the simulation program Simul8 was used. Referring to the simulation study results, it is possible to check the work of improvements and to choose the most appropriate variant for the Tim Hortons restaurant.

Current Situation

Tim Hortons is a fast food chain which provides the complex breakfasts and lunches for customers. The brand’s well-known coffee and donuts are served during breakfasts (Cormack 2008). Soups, sandwiches, and cakes are usually served during lunches. The lunchtime (11:00AM – 1:00PM) can be discussed as the peak hours because of the significant amount of customers coming to the restaurant.

To design the simulation model, it is necessary to use the factual data related to the situation at Tim Hortons restaurants (Fullerton 2005). Regularly, five employees work with customers, serving the lunch. One or two of the servers are responsible to perform as cashiers. These servers have the duty to take small orders, spending few minutes to work with them. The other servers are responsible for preparing dishes to complete the orders (soups, salads, sandwiches).

Customers who wait for small orders (‘type 1’ customers) can join the queue at the cash register. The cashier is responsible for taking and filling the customers’ orders.

Ordering soups, salads, or sandwiches, customers pay for the products at the cash register. The next step is to join the other queue to wait for completing and providing the order.

Objectives

The spending less time per customer which leads to providing the service for more customers per hour is the main objective to develop the credible model. The expected outcomes of the strategy are the increase of the overall profit till 90% in 6 months because of working with more customers.

It is necessary to concentrate on the average wait time for a customer which is no more than 1 minute before being served.

The adequate workload of the employees should be taken into consideration.

Assumptions

To model the system and a credible variant to implement in the restaurant, influential assumptions have been discussed.

1. It is assumed that cashiers can perform the same tasks at the same rate.

2. Moreover, the servers of all types perform the same tasks at the same rate in spite of their primary duties and the number of customers observed.

3. Two days at the end of the working week are chosen to create the model and make conclusions about the customer arrivals. The lunchtime (11:00AM – 1:00PM) is under discussion.

4. The focus of this study is on peak hours. The definite Tim Hortons restaurant is chosen. The developed scenarios can be considered as not appropriate for checking the situation during the other hours or at the other Tim Hortons restaurants. The problem in the fact the restaurants differ in their arrival patterns.

5. The time series of seconds throughput (units per seconds) to show the warm up time.

Verification and Validation

Verification and validation are important to state about the credibility and appropriateness of the model used (Speziale 2010; Zeigler 2000). To find and fix errors in the conceptual model, the verification procedure was performed basing on static and dynamic checks (Turban et al. 2000).

Such aspects as downtime, distributions, output routing, specifications, and underlying assumptions were taken into consideration to provide static checks. To ensure that the model was implemented correctly dynamic checks with references to the output and speed results in relation to 20 independent runs were presented.

Performance measures should be checked simultaneously with visual checks (Abdel 2008). Thus, to confirm the model’s correctness, the visual logic code was used along with inspecting the animation of the model during 4 full system runs.

Validation is the checking procedure which states the correlation of the model’s work with the real world situation (Pace 2004). Referring to the specifics of the study and model used, it is necessary to pay attention to the white box validation because of impossibility to refer to the real world validation (Zahir et al. 2000). The accents were made on proving the relevance of the model with references to the sample of 70 runs. The expected results are confirmed, and the fact allows speaking about the general validity of the model proposed.

References

Abdel, A 2008, Simulation and modeling: current technologies and applications, IGI Pub., USA.

Cormack, P 2008, “‘True Stories’ of Canada: Tim Hortons and the branding of national identity”, Cultural Sociology, vol. 2 no. 3, pp. 369-384.

Fullerton, G 2005, “The impact of brand commitment on loyalty to retail service brands”, Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, vol. 22 no. 2, pp. 97–110.

Speziale, R 2010, Lessons from the successful investor, Robin Speziale, USA.

Pace, D 2004, “Modeling and simulation verification and validation challenges”, Johns Hopkins Technical Digest, vol. 25, no. 2, 163-172.

Turban, E, Lee, J, King, D, & Chung, H 2000, Electronic commerce: a managerial perspective, Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

Zahir, I, Hlupic, V, Baldwin, L, & Love, P 2000, “Re-engineering manufacturing processes through simulation modelling”, Logistics Information Management, vol. 13 no. 1, 7-13.

Zeigler, B 2000, Theory of modelling and simulation, Academic Press, USA.

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