With the tradition of the annual summer promotion event, the manager of ONNIE

Jewellers is wondering how to improve the shopping experience for the customers.

From the information collected in the previous year, it’s apparent that cutting waiting

time during the event has been the priority to be considered.

As revealed by the flow chart, there are three specific waiting sections. Guests would

wait for a mixed cocktail, service of unlocking cabinets, and receipts. (Exhibit1)

Particularly, the capacity utilization of the receipt part is 135%, which made it the

bottleneck of the whole process. (Exhibit2) So, specifically, ONNIE Jewellers should

decrease the waiting time for these activities.

Regarding the overall operation, the value proposition of ONNIE is to provide

differentiated, high-end jewelry to customers. For Onnie, offline shopping is more

highlighted while her daughter Victoria valued social media approaches. This summer

event could be seen as a compromise of their preference. Online invitation is an

efficient tool to decrease the variability of guests' amount and risk of insufficient

inventory, thus promising a relatively high-quality service and exclusive offline

environment for guests.

For Greeter and Payment, their utilization rates are moderate enough (50%,77%).

Under the assumption of Exhibit2, the greeting part could handle 120 person in

maximum per hour, far enough for the previous situation.So, there is no need to stager
the timing. In the sales area, Onnie segments the market and processes invisibly. The

customers who are only interested in relatively cheap products do not need sales

service, so the effective capacity of the four salespersons could be spent on those

more high-end customers. But it’s still important to control the browsing time of each

guest. The bar is a useful way to buffer the guest flow in case everyone crowds in the

sales area, which relieves the hosting pressure of it. But it also forms new operation

challenges at the same time, since long waiting lines for a drink also deteriorate the

experience. The billing section only uses labor work with relatively low efficiency so

should be tackled to change.

To improve the shopping experience, here is my plan for Onnie.

 Increase the number of bartenders.

To provide a high-quality and timely service in this social event.

 Increase the advanced-prepared mix cocktails inventory.

The specific cocktail typs could be tracked from the previous data.

 Add a display section in the bar.

Without increasing salespersons, customers could browse the products before

going to the sales area. For guests who only want the less expensive items, they could

even go to the payment section directly, while the other guests could have a simple

impression of these items, thus saving time later in the sales area. Those who want to

inspect specific items, could inform the waitress and move to the sales area when

everything is ready. Not only could it decrease the waiting time for the customers, but
the salespersons could also unlock a cabinet for more people at one time since now

they know who are interested in the same item, thus decresing the variability in

unlock part.

 Equip salespersons with iPads.

To tackle the bottleneck, Onnie should purchase iPads, so there is no hand-

written receipt anymore. For the payment waiting line, the salespersons and Victoria

now could communicate in real-time with iPads to know the lining situation, so

customers could accommodate their time. The iPad is multifunctional so can bring

various benefits in the long term.

The most significant risk of this plan is the high cost. Hiring more bartenders,

increasing more prepared cocktails inventories, new display platforms in the bar, and

purchasing iPads would cost a great amount of money. Because the case does not

mention their budget but emhpaszies their high-end value proposition, I assume that

Onnie is willing to invest to provide a better shopping experience. Another risk is the

uncertainty of how well the bar could buffer the guests to the sales area, so I

recommend Onnie to change the display to Exhibit 3, in which the guests must pass

the bar before going to the sales area.

Exhibit 1

Assumption:

The sales area is displayed in this way.

Guests could move among different sections flexibly.

Exhibit 2

Assumption：

 Guests would go to different areas after the greeting section, the arrival time of

guests information could not be used to analyze the overall capacity utilization of

each hour expect the one of greeter part.

 The server would serve the guests in need the whole night.
Exhibit 3