| Drive-thru systems, which account for up to forty percent of the total sales of most fast food restaurants, are faced with the problem of long waiting times and loss of customers in the case of single window drive-thru system. This analysis focuses on the effect of splitting the tasks and employing more workers through the double window drive thru system. In such a system, it is important to consider the balance between service and cost. The ultimate goal is to achieve an economic balance between the cost of service and amount of service.;The goal of achieving an economic balance between the cost of service and amount of service is achieved in this work by determining the break-even arrival rate over which the double window drive thru system is preferable.;Queuing theory is used here to show that splitting of tasks into a network would improve service. However, it can be shown that analytical model is intractable for most realistic systems. Hence the work here involves analysis of a drive thru system using an Arena simulation model. The double window model is formulated into three cases and compared with the single window model. Model performance measures include the length of the customer in the system, average number in the queue, throughput and lost customers. Cost analysis is also presented as a basic for decision making. |
