Question

The manager is concerned about the average time for getting an order ready for pick-up (either by a full-service shopper or the customer). Please note that this includes both the time duration from the arrival of the order to the moment it starts to be processed by a shopper, and the processing time (shopping, checkout, and moving to the staging area). She finds that it is difficult to change the order arrival pattern or the processing speed of the in-store shoppers, and decides to check if they can potentially reduce the time by changing the number of in-store shoppers.

To reduce the average time for getting an order ready below 60 minutes, at least how many in-store shoppers are required in total?

Answer 1

To reduce the average order readiness time below 60 minutes, the number of in-store shoppers is a key variable. However, without specific data on current processing times and shopper numbers, we cannot determine the exact number of shoppers needed.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question seeks to understand how to reduce the average time for getting an order ready for pick-up at a store. It is noted that the average arrival rate of orders is one customer every two minutes, which means 30 customers arrive per hour. If we are aiming to reduce the average processing time of an order to less than 60 minutes, factors such as the number of in-store shoppers need to be examined to determine how changing this number can decrease the overall time taken to process the orders.

Analysis:

• On average, one customer arrives every two minutes. This is derived from the rate of 30 customers per hour (60 minutes).
• For three customers to arrive, it would take, on average, six minutes (3 customers x 2 minutes per customer).

To determine the minimum number of in-store shoppers required to reduce the average order readiness time to less than 60 minutes, more information is needed, such as the current average processing time per shopper and the number of shoppers currently employed. Since this additional information is not provided, a definitive number of shoppers required cannot be determined based solely on the information given.