THE ART & SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT: FAST FOOD
ASSIGNMENT

Fast Food Assignment
Lucas Aguera Vieira
IME 4120: Industrial Systems Management
Dr. Larry A. Mallak
September 9th 2014

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THE ART & SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT: FAST FOOD
ASSIGNMENT

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Nowadays, there are many kinds of restaurants that seek ways to satisfy customers. These ways are processes, efficiency, and delivery, how things look, how systems work together, how healthy is the food, along with others. For this assignment, called “Fast Food Assignment”, we need to choose one kind of Fast Food and observe a system involved in the manufacturing process of the food in two perspectives: Engineering and Art/Aesthetic perspective.
The restaurant I decided to choose was SUBWAY ®. According to it's website, today the
SUBWAY® brand is the world's largest submarine sandwich chain with more than 37,000 locations around the world.
First, the process involved is very interesting because the customer can choose what he wants, such as in other restaurants, but the difference between this restaurant and the others is that the sandwich is made in front of the customer according to the order. This process may resemble a kind of assembly line in industries, where you need to place the tools and the men in the sequence of the operation so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance while going through the process. Usually there are two employees: One is responsible for making the sandwich and another responsible for receiving the account. Just like in industries, all the "equipment" (in this case, the variety of foods) are available to prepare the final product.
Another perspective is about efficiency. Usually, all the ingredients, like bread, salads, meat, and sauces, are already available when the customer starts to order. I could observe a few orders (8 orders, in total) and each order takes about four minutes on average. During my time on the restaurant, I talked with three customers and they told me that the time to make the order is good. One criteria I observed is that having prepared ingredients is a kind of process optimization, such as in industries process.

THE ART & SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT: FAST FOOD
ASSIGNMENT

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Some of the restaurants have a delivery system but the restaurant where I went did not.
You can order when you are there, and if you want, you can take it home. However, this is not a problem to a few customers who I talked because they prefer to eat there because is more fresh.
The SUBWAY ® restaurant where I went is not so big. Regarding the arrangement of tables and chairs, there are a few of them, but it is enough for the demand. It is comfortable