Group members:

Feng Shiqi (21047552g)

Niu Ruoyu (21047071g)

Optimisation of queuing system for fast food restaurants under a hybrid queuing model
- the case of McDonald's Hung Hom shop

Abstract
Due to the synchronization of service production and consumption, the non-storability
of service, and the randomness of customer arrival, it is inevitable to make customers
wait in line. Queuing time has a significant impact on customer satisfaction, therefore,
it is necessary for managers to conduct in-depth research on customer queuing system
to optimize it.
This paper attempts to derive the optimal configuration of service station. We’ll take
McDonald’s in Hung Hom, Hong Kong as an example, using a deformation of the
queueing base model m,m,1 in operations management: m,m,1,k,f (where m,m,1 is a
single service station model for each queue, k is the fast food restaurant capacity and f
is the type of service station, including two types of service stations, actual service
staff and self-service order stations). By using the principle of cost minimisation, to
calculate the proportions of the two types of service stations in the short term.
1 Introduction
With the accelerated pace of people's life, more and more people choose fast food to
save time. McDonald's, as the representative of fast food service industry, is gradually
loved by most young people. Usually, people will inevitably encounter the queuing
phenomenon when they step into McDonald's, mainly because the time of arrival and
the time of receiving service are uncertain. Increasing staff and self-ordering
equipment will certainly ease the queuing phenomenon, but it will lead to increased
investment and, to a certain extent, waste of idle staff and self-ordering equipment. If
the staff or self-ordering equipment is too small, it will lead to the aggravation of the
queuing phenomenon, the loss of potential customers, the reduction of revenue and
other risks. At the same time, McDonald's ordering mainly has two forms of manual
window ordering and self-ordering equipment, two forms of ordering in the consumer
waiting time, cost and other aspects are not the same. How to find a proper balance
between manual ordering and self-service ordering to ensure the optimization of
McDonald's ordering service system is the main content of our research in this paper.
This paper applies queuing theory and its related models to solve the McDonald's
queuing problem, which provides an effective means to solve the difficulties
encountered in practice.
2 Literature review
To go to the restaurant when the queue for food has become a kind of default link.
This process involves all aspects, including the way of ordering, consumer
psychology and customer impatience limits, etc., the business is not well thought out
in which point, it will cause consumer dissatisfaction, or lead to low efficiency of
ordering. Today's times have made customers increasingly impatient and many are not
willing to wait in line for more than the shortest duration. Therefore, the length of
waiting time counter at the checkout has become one of the most important service
attributes in assessing the competitiveness of retailers.1Chia-Huang Wu, Dong-Yuh
Yang2 considered the parameter sensitivity of the system's key performance indicators
from the perspective of customers' impatience in waiting in the queue, using a matrix-
geometric approach, in order to improve service quality and customer satisfaction.
Finally a regression model is proposed to determine the minimum cost required to
maintain a satisfactory service quality. And Elliott N. Weiss, Chad Tucker et al. argue
that managers usually address the main causes of customer wait times by providing
additional service features: high utilization and excessive variability. Thus, traditional
approaches to perform queue management either (1) consider wait times as inevitable
(2) replenish queue capacity to reduce utilization (3) attempt to reduce variability. 3
However, it is far from enough to consider only customer psychology, as labor cost is
also a huge hurdle in today's rapidly developing economy, and it is something that
businesses need to consider regarding whether it is better to have real cashiers or self-
ordering machines in restaurants, and how many of each is optimal. One article
observed the number of people per unit time period in an hour at McDonald's to
estimate the service rate and the waiting time of customers in the queue, and finally
arrived at the optimal number of servers based on cost minimization and efficiency
maximization.4 However, the restaurant industry is facing increasing costs such as
"high rent, high cost of ingredients, and high labor cost", and more and more
companies are moving from external turnover to internal costs.5 In this paper, we hope
to introduce an online ordering system to compare the cost and efficiency of the two
ordering systems, which is more in line with today's digital trend.
3 McDonald's dining queue analysis
The dining service system at McDonald's is a typical random service system, which
mainly includes 3 basic components: customer arrival process, queuing rules, and
service organization.
1 ） Customer arrival process. The arrival time of customers is only related to the
length of the time interval, and the customers arriving at McDonald's within the
disjoint time interval are independent, and the arrival of customers is a random
process.
2) Queuing rules. Arriving customers are served on a first-come, first-served basis,
and it is a waiting system. When customers arrive at McDonald's, they will choose to
order manually or from self-ordering machines according to their own preferences
and habits. When there is an available window, customers can accept the service
directly and leave the service counter after the service is finished; if there is no service
window available when they arrive, they need to wait in line for the service.
3）Dining service window, including manual ordering window and self-order table. It
is a time-determined type with an exponential probability distribution.
3.1 Analysis and testing of relevant data
(1) Distribution test of customer arrival rate
In this paper, the number of customers arriving at McDonald's during the lunch peak
was tested and recorded on site at a McDonald's store in Hung Hom, Hong Kong on a
certain day in December 2021, and the collective data are shown in Table 1 below.
Table 1 McDonald's customer unit arrival time statistics

Time group Manual Self-service Time group Manual Self-service

arrivals arrivals
distance ordering ordering distance ordering ordering

11:29-11： 11:59-12：
5 2 3 6 3 3
31 01

11:31-11： 12:01-12：
7 3 4 2 0 2
33 03

11:33-11： 12:03-12：
4 1 3 1 1 0
35 05

11:35-11： 12:05-12：
0 0 0 2 0 2
37 07

11:37-11： 12:07-12：
1 0 1 4 1 3
39 09

11:39-11： 12:09-12：
6 2 4 5 2 3
41 11

11:41-11： 12:11-12：
2 0 2 5 1 4
43 13

11:43-11： 12:13-12：
5 2 3 7 2 5
45 15

511:45-11： 12:15-12：
2 1 1 5 1 4
47 17

11:47-11： 12:17-12：
7 3 4 3 0 3
49 19

11:49-11： 12:19-12：
2 1 1 6 2 4
51 21

11:51-11： 12:21-12：
7 2 5 12 4 8
53 23
 11:53-11： 12:23-12：
6 1 5 5 2 3
55 25

11:55-11： 12:25-12：
2 1 1 5 1 4
57 27

11:57-11： 12:27-12：
7 2 5 2 1 1
59 29

Based on the data of Table1, using, using the Kolmogorov Smirnov test (Kolmogorov
Smirnov, 1-K S test), and analyzed using SPSSAU software, the test of whether the
customer arrival of McDonald's obeys the Poisson distribution is calculated as the
mean value of the sample data is 4.43, the maximum positive difference value is
0.152, the maximum negative difference value is 0.111, and the two-tailed asymptotic
probability value of Poisson test parameter is 0.491, which is greater than 0.05 (i.e.,
P>0.05 ), and the customer arrival can be considered to obey Poisson distribution by
significance test.
3.2 McDonald's service window queuing model establishment
As the customer arrival rate obeys Poisson distribution, the customer service time
obeys negative exponential distribution, and its distribution function is:,where,
indicates the number of customers arriving in a certain time. It can be set up as M/M/s
queuing system, and the M/M/s distribution indicates that the arrival time is Poisson
distributed. The service time is exponentially distributed and the number of service
equipment.
For each customer can be described by 3 variables, namely: interval of arrival time
with the previous customer, queuing time and time to receive service. The variation in
the interval of customer arrival time, time to receive service, waiting time in the
service window M queue (including waiting time and sojourn time) and queue length
(including captain queue length) makes the characteristic indicators of the model as
follows.
1) Average number of customers waiting in the queue
 2
Lq 
（ - ）

2) Average number of passengers in the service area

Ls  Ws

3) Average waiting time of customers in the queue

Wq Lq / 
=

4) Average length of stay of customers in the queue

Ws  Wq  1 / 

3.3 Related calculation and result analysis

(1) Manual ordering table
1
 x  t
From the previous knowledge: = =42 人/hour； = =30 人/hour；

Lq/人 Ls/人 Wq Ws/hour

M1 ρ /hour
1 1.4 9.8 11.1972 0.2333 0.2666

(2) Self-service ordering counter

1
 x  t
From the previous knowledge: = =90 人/hour； = =60 人/hour；

Lq/人 Ls/人 Wq/hour Ws/hour

M2 ρ
1 1.5 7.5 9 0.0833 0.1

4 Theory of Mcdonald’s Effectiveness Analysis

4.1 Optimal number of self-service machines
Because manpower is expensive in Hong Kong, the basic salary of a cashier at
McDonald's in Hung Hom is HK$15,000 (about RMB 12,300) a month, and the price
of a 21.5-inch self-ordering machine is RMB 3,500. Excluding the training cost of the
staff and the maintenance cost of the machine. In the queuing system, the number of
service stations determines the quality and efficiency of service, but restaurants
cannot blindly invest in staff and equipment, so they have to optimize the cost of
service.
And since the price of hiring an employee is much higher than the price of buying an
ordering machine, plus the result of the previous calculation shows that: μ (machine)
> μ (manual), which means that the service rate of the machine is higher than that of
the manual, and Wq (machine) < Wq (manual), that is, when consumers order food in
the machine, their waiting time in the queue is much less than the time they need to
wait when they order food manually, so for these reasons Therefore, in theory, setting
up only ordering machines in fast food restaurants is a way to save cost and achieve
efficiency. The following is an estimate of the number of ordering machines needed,
based on our observations in the previous section.
We have:
min Z =CsM +Cw L
where: Z - the expected value of the sum of service cost and consumer waiting cost,
Cs - machine cost, Cw - individual consumer waiting cost per unit of time, M - the
optimal number of machines, L - the number of consumers.
In general, if people's waiting time in the queue is within 5 minutes, it is tolerable and
the unit waiting cost at this time can be disregarded.
According to the above observation, there are about 132 people in Hung Hom
McDonald's in one hour, and we take the sample size as 132. Assuming that there are
X machines.
λ =132/x people/hour, μ=60 people/hour
Since 0<=Wq<=5 mins
Wq=Lq/λ =λ/μ(μ-λ)
0<=132/x/60*(60-132/n)<=1/12
X>=2.64
Since x is a positive integer, the optimal value of X is 3. So the minimum cost
minZ=3500*3=10500.
5 couclusion
In this paper, through the actual survey and estimated data, the SPSS software test
passed that the arrival rate distribution of McDonald's customers is Poisson
distribution and the service time of customers obeys exponential distribution; through
the establishment of M/M/s model and cost optimization configuration, the service
system reaches the optimal state.
We put forward several suggestions based on the above results:
1> Fast food restaurants should create a good service environment, so as to improve
the customer's waiting tolerance and reduce the loss caused by waiting. For example,
put some magazines of interest to customers in the system, play soothing soft music,
show interesting animation or advertising, etc.
2> Try to use more independent order methods to reduce costs and improve service
efficiency. Of course, taking into account some special circumstances, one or two
more service staff can be added to solve unexpected situations or increase the service
temperature.
3> ‘Staggered guidance’ for customers to avoid the pressure of peak hours.
Due to the ability and time constraint, the accuracy of some data still needs to be
investigated in depth, and the system simulation part still needs to be carried out. In
addition, this thesis only analyzes the system under stable conditions, and further
research is needed when the system is under unstable conditions.
References
1. Kumar, P., 2005. The competitive impact of service process
improvement:Examining customers’ waiting experiences in retail markets. J.
Retail. 81 (3),171–180
2. Chia-Huang Wu, Dong-Yuh Yang,Bi-objective optimization of a queueing model
with two-phase heterogeneous service,Computers & Operations Research,Volume
130,2021,105230,ISSN 0305-0548
3. Elliott N. Weiss, Chad Tucker,Queue management: Elimination, expectation, and
enhancement,Business Horizons,Volume 61, Issue 5,2018,Pages 671-678,ISSN
0007-6813
4. https://wenku.baidu.com/view/2caf74550722192e4436f62e.html
5. https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/98895066