Operations for Analysis: Fast-Food Restaurant

Operations for Analysis
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Operations for Analysis
Process thinking helps in analyzing an operation. For the process flow to be analyzed, a system must be selected, and certain components be identified and investigated. Some of this components include customers, services produced, primary process flows and suppliers. Analyzing operations requires one to focus on information-flow and materials-flow. Although these two aspects are closely related, they are different in various aspects and are important in analyzing certain operations in some organizations such as schools, restaurants, and libraries.
College
When analyzing the operations of a college, information-flow is the best choice to identifying the customers, services produced, and primary processes. A college is mainly involved in providing services of educational development where the teachers and those vendors who provide the materials necessary in teaching the courses are the suppliers. The students are the customers of this institutions. The process flow starts with students registering for various classes. After registering for classes, they receive necessary course materials for the classes that they registered for; then they show up for the classes fully prepared with the assigned materials. Instructors or teachers, teach them based on the assigned materials. Finally, the students are tested on what they have learned from the provided materials by receiving grades based on their performance.
Fast-food restaurant
A fast-food restaurant provides food quickly to its customers. In analyzing this type of a system, more focus should be on both materials-flow and information. Customers order food from the menus provided by the restaurant the materials (food) are the prepared (cooked and provided by front-line service attendants and cashiers who are in constant interaction with the customers. Suppliers to this type of a system are all those vendors who provide the materials that are used in preparing the food that the restaurant serves. Information-flow starts with the customers making an order from the menu, front-line service attendants conveying the message to back-line attendants who prepare the food. The front-line attendants may also convey information from the back to the customers regarding their orders.
Library
It is tricky to analyze the system of a library because it provides many resources to people. Due to this reason, it is tricky analyzing the information-flow and materials flow in this type of a system. The library provides all the materials needed for use by different users, and at the same time, it provide...