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Domino’s in India: Meeting deadlines by turning away business
My colleague Sunil pointed me a neat article on Domino’s Pizza’s Indian operations. While the chain long ago gave up on an explicit delivery time guarantee, their Indian franchisee Jubilant Foodworks...
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Managing multisite services
How do you grow a service business when growing means adding locations? That’s always been one of my favorite topics in service operations. It poses interesting challenges on what must be standardized...
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Those shelves won’t stock themselves
Another day, another Wal-Mart story. This one is from Businessweek and deals with troubles Wal-Mart is reportedly having getting goods on the shelves (Walmart Faces the Cost of Cost-Cutting: Empty...
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Managing a harbor wait list
I live in Wilmette, the village just north of Evanston. It is a pleasant place if a little sleepy. However, we currently have a controversy brewing over Wilmette Harbor. The harbor is where the North...
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Fallen Arches: Fixing service at McDonald’s
What counts as good service at a fast food restaurant? Speed obviously matters but what about staff interactions? No expects a quick service restaurant to have a Zagat’s rating (although some Chicago...
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Waits at the Beijing airport
All this week I have been traveling in China with a group of Kellogg faculty. It has been a fascinating trip as we have met with officials from several government agencies, executives from a variety...
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Big Data meets HR meets Call Center Management
We have already written in the past about the use of data analytics to best route customers to agents based on demographics and other characteristics. The NY Times has an interesting article on the...
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Charging queues
Automotive News recently had a report on driving a Tesla Model S electric car from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. You can find a video describing the drive here. What I found more interesting was the...
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Using technology to reduce queues
Long lines at check out can spoil a shopping trip just as a bad dessert can spoil an otherwise fine dinner. Either can, if you will, leave a bad taste in your mouth. So what can a retailer do besides...
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How late should a fast food restaurant stay open?
How long is long enough? That effectively is the question asked in a recent Wall Street Journal article with regard to quick service restaurant hours of operations (Will Longer Hours Boost Sales?, Apr...
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What price Wi-Fi?
When I was in grad school in the early 90s, it was a big deal when the business school installed a mess of new pay phones — directly addressing a bottleneck that frustrated MBA students trying to...
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How can hotels lose money on room service?
Apparently, the New York Hilton Midtown will no longer be offering room service. So customers will no longer have the option of ordering cookies and milk for $20. That’s got to be a lucrative business,...
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Jumping theme park lines
How much would you spend to skip a line at a theme park? At Universal Studios Hollywood at least some people are willing to pony up a lot (At Theme Parks, a V.I.P. Ticket to Ride, New York Times, Jun...
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Long, long customs lines
It’s been a while since we have written about long delays to clear immigration control at airports. But as this eye candy from the Wall Street Journal makes clear, it is time to revisit the topic (The...
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Golf course bottlenecks
How long should it take to play a round of golf? There are two ways of thinking about that question. The first is to think of playing when you have the course to yourself. Then the time to play is just...
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How do you know the gym is too crowded if you don’t go?
How do you learn how crowded a service provider such as a gym (or a bar in Santa Fe) is without going? There is clearly some value in getting information on how congested the service provider is. At...
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Kaizen as charity
A few weeks ago we posted a video of how Toyota engineers helped a New York City food bank optimize how it packs boxes of food to be distributed to families still displaced from Hurricane Sandy. Now...
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Gamification and congestion
Congestion is a common problem in services. A large number of customers put demands on the system all at the same time and delays ensue. A few weeks ago we posted about GymFlow, an app that tries to...
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How to sell World Cup tickets
I am not much of a soccer fan. Hence, I don’t really care that tickets for next year’s World Cup tournament go on sale today — except, as MarketPlace reports, the sales process is crazy complicated and...
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Balancing bikes
Bike sharing is spreading across the nation. One of the highest profile programs has been in New York City, and while there has been griping about various aspects of the Citi Bike program, it has by...
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