Benihana Simulation Analysis
Benihana Simulation Analysis
Harvard Business Publishing has created a computer simulation to replicate the operations management decisions facing Benihana. Benihana is a teppanyaki style restaurant franchise that focuses on bringing a theatrical dinning experience to its patrons. The layout of the restaurant consists of two seating areas: the bar and the dining area. The goal of this simulation is to maximize utilization, throughput time and the nightly profit using different batching, bar sizing, hours of operation, as well as advertising strategies. The first five challenges are individual challenges where only one to three factors can be changed to gain affect nightly profit. The sixth and final challenge is to design the best strategy possible. In doing so, you use factors from the previous challenges in order to maximize the overall profit.
The first challenge is the most straightforward as you only have one factor to adjust and analyze. Challenge one looks to analyze how batching affects throughput in the dining area. If you choose to utilize batching you are replicating Benihana's standard operating policy by sending customers from the bar to the dining room in groups of eight. The maximum number of seats at a dining room table is also eight. Therefore you are batching the process of seating by only filling tables, as there is a sufficient supply to do so. Batching is indeed the most profitable strategy. By batching or “clumping” multiple groups of customers to meet the maximum of eight, they would be better utilizing the capacity of the restaurant. Instead of sending a group of two to one table and a group of six to another, by batching them you only use one table but still seat the same number of people. Profit is the dependant variable in this challenge and is directly influenced by the number of customers that can be served. Therefore by maximizing the use of restaurant capacity we will see higher nightly profits. Through the simulation this holds
Harvard Business Publishing has created a computer simulation to replicate the operations management decisions facing Benihana. Benihana is a teppanyaki style restaurant franchise that focuses on bringing a theatrical dinning experience to its patrons. The layout of the restaurant consists of two seating areas: the bar and the dining area. The goal of this simulation is to maximize utilization, throughput time and the nightly profit using different batching, bar sizing, hours of operation, as well as advertising strategies. The first five challenges are individual challenges where only one to three factors can be changed to gain affect nightly profit. The sixth and final challenge is to design the best strategy possible. In doing so, you use factors from the previous challenges in order to maximize the overall profit.
The first challenge is the most straightforward as you only have one factor to adjust and analyze. Challenge one looks to analyze how batching affects throughput in the dining area. If you choose to utilize batching you are replicating Benihana's standard operating policy by sending customers from the bar to the dining room in groups of eight. The maximum number of seats at a dining room table is also eight. Therefore you are batching the process of seating by only filling tables, as there is a sufficient supply to do so. Batching is indeed the most profitable strategy. By batching or “clumping” multiple groups of customers to meet the maximum of eight, they would be better utilizing the capacity of the restaurant. Instead of sending a group of two to one table and a group of six to another, by batching them you only use one table but still seat the same number of people. Profit is the dependant variable in this challenge and is directly influenced by the number of customers that can be served. Therefore by maximizing the use of restaurant capacity we will see higher nightly profits. Through the simulation this holds