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Each customer spends on average 30 seconds with the cashier to order and pay. About 25% of customers order food, which requires an additional 20 seconds of the cashier's time. While waiting in line, the students reflect on these facts and ask themselves:

What is the implied utilization of the frozen drink maker?
Which resource has the highest implied utilization?

User Szidijani
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1 Answer

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Final answer:

The rate of customer arrivals and resource utilization in a business. On average, customers arrive every two minutes, meaning it takes six minutes for three customers to arrive.

Step-by-step explanation:

Customer Arrival and Utilization Calculations

Customer service rates and the utilization of resources within a business context, particularly as they pertain to a cashier interaction and the use of a frozen drink maker in a store. Utilizing the provided information, we can deduce the following:

Customers arrive at a rate of one every two minutes, which is 30 customers per hour.

When the store opens, it takes on average six minutes for three customers to arrive.

The utilization of the frozen drink maker cannot be calculated with the given data, as there is no mention of how long it takes to use the frozen drink maker or how often it is used.

The resource with the highest implied utilization would generally be the one with the highest demand and the longest processing time. The cashier's time, especially when dealing with food orders, seems to present a higher utilization, but without specific data on the drink maker's usage, a definitive answer cannot be given.

Probability Estimate for Customer Arrivals

Moreover, the probability that it takes less than one minute for the next customer to arrive after a customer has been served is not provided in the data, but typically, in a Poisson distribution model, which is often used for this kind of calculation, the arrival times are exponentially distributed. Thus, a calculation would require the mean arrival rate (one customer per two minutes in this case).

User Leeor
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