Case Study 1: Drive-Thru Service Times @ McDonald’s

Case Study 1: Drive-Thru Service Times @ McDonald’s

Question 1: After returning from the training session at Hamburger University, a McDonald’s store owner selected a random sample of 362 drive-thru customers and carefully measured the time it took from when a customer entered the McDonald’s property until the customer received the order at the drive-thru window. These data are in the file called McDonald’s Drive-Thru Waiting Times. Note, the owner selected some customers during the breakfast period, others during lunch, and others during dinner. Construct any appropriate graphs and charts that will effectively display these drive-thru data. Prepare a short discussion indicating the conclusions that this store owner might reach after reviewing the graphs and charts you have prepared.

Figure 1: Graph and chart of number of customer Vs. drive thru time at Breakfast Time

Figure 2: Graph and chart of number of customer Vs. drive thru time at Lunch Time

Figure 3: Graph and chart of number of customer vs. drive thru time at Dinner Time

The above graph shows that the at the breakfast time, a number of customers are less as compared to the lunch and dinner time.  In figure 1, the drive thru time is between 40 to 100 seconds at lunch time the drive thru time is between 100 to 300 seconds and same in at dinner time. It is because of order people made like some people only order coffee juice but some of them order number of deals that took a time to prepare.

Question 2: Referring to question 1, suppose the manager comes away with the conclusion that his store is not meeting the 90-second customer service goal. As a result he plans to dig deeper into the problem by collecting more data from the drive-thru process. Discuss what other measures you would suggest the manager collect. Discuss how these data could be of potential value in helping the store owner understand his problem. 3. Visit a local McDonald’s that has a drive-thru facility. Randomly sample 20 drive-thru customers and collect the following data:

Based on the conclusion that the drive thru time is higher than 90 sec then the possible measures that a manager should take include data related to order type like some people order only 1 deal, some order between 3 to 5 deals and some people order more than 10 deals. So it is important to find when people order more deals. On the other hand, it is important to measure the time a customer takes to place order etc. This type of data could be helpful to find the total drive time and delay in time factors.

Figure 4: number of customers, time of arrival, time to place and getting order and number of cars

The above graph shows a number of customers and their arrival time at McDonald drive thru between pm and 2 pm. The above graph tells about the time customer time to place an order and getting an order, a number of cars in line.  According to the data, it is concluded that the drive thru time is higher than 90 sec most of the time because of the number of deals a customer place in order.