Question

Have you ever wondered how many different ways there are to run a small restaurant? Delivering a sit down eating experience is a common process after all. In Japan it is fairly common to have a sushi restaurant that serves sushi on a conveyor belt! Interestingly, these sushi restaurants are typically very inexpensive. In Boston, there is usually at least one of these restaurants. For example, you could try Enso Sushi, but the sushi there is at least $2 per plate.

Let's imagine visiting one of these restaurants in Japan in order to observe how they are able to keep their costs down enough to sell sushi for about $1 per plate...

On entering the door of the restaurant, the whole staff would call out "irrashai" (welcome). After finding an available seat, you would then pick some sushi and begin to eat. Chopsticks, condiments and napkins would be available on the counter in front of you, but a server would bring out some tea and a cup of miso soup. This was a standard addition everyone got once they came in and sat down. If you had a particular desire for a specific fish that was not on the conveyor, you would just ask the chef to make it.The chef was located in the middle of the conveyor, surrounded by cases of fresh fish on display to the diners. This gave a feeling of freshness to the place.

Once you ate enough, you will stack the plates and get up to leave. The server would glance at your plate stack and calculate the bill by counting the plates. On the way out, again, the staff would call out "arigato gozaimashita" (thank you very much). It was quick and easy.

Reflecting back, you can imagine the other processes that must have been operating to make the sushi restaurant work. Someone must have been supplying the chef with fresh fish and materials when he ran out. The chef would also manage the inventory on the belt, making sure everything was fresh and nothing stayed out too long (it was raw fish after all — it can't stay at room temperature for too long). Additionally, someone must have made tea and soup, but you mightn’t see where that was or who did it. There was no cash register in the restaurant. The server just took cash and made change from her pocket. You can suppose there must have been some sort of office in the back where they could count the money and store it safely.

Draw a system blueprint for the process of a customer coming in and eating in the conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Start with the consumer flow.  (15 points)

Analyze your model to make sure it fully represents the key elements of the process. Pay special attention to any data used in the process (this will require some creative thinking). And write in the key environmental elements that signify and enable each major stage in the process for the customer.

Evaluate and add the key supporting processes that enable this service to work.

Decide what the key features of this process are that make it capable of high speed, high quality, low cost delivery of a very perishable, often expensive food.  (5 points)

You might analyze key dynamics of this process on which you can judge its effectiveness:

a.       Wait-times (locations of unwanted waits)

b.      Reliability (the percent likelihood of a flow occurring)

Flow time (the time it takes for a task or flow to execute)

Responsibility (the resources assigned)

e.       Fidelity (the degree to which a process step* adds value in achieving the key business outcomes of the overall activity)

* a process step can be any activity within a process, as in a task, decision, of data storage flow.

Discuss how you are seeing technology being applied or can be applied to innovate the service blueprints at restaurants and draw a new blueprint to reflect the improved services by applying new technologies (10 points).

What technology has been or could be applied in the process?

Which process steps can be improved by using some technology?

Draw another system blueprint to reflect the changes you suggest.