Question

Three hairstylist, Francois, Bernard and Mimi run Fast Service Hair Salon. They perform only shampooing and hairstyling activities. On average it takes 10 minutes to shampoo, 15 minutes to style hair, and 5 minutes to bill the customer. When a customer arrives, he or she first checks in the receptionist (Lulu). This takes only 3 minutes. One of the three stylists then takes charge of the customer and performs all three activities – shampooing, styling and billing consecutively. A customer has suggested that billing activity be transferred to Lulu. What would be the impact on salon's capacity (i.e., the maximum number of customers they can serve per hour)?

Answer 1

Fast Service Hair Salon

The impact is that instead of a stylist serving only 5 customers in 150 minutes, this same stylist can serve 6 customers. The company-wide implication is that the three stylists, Francois, Bernard, and Mimi can serve 18 customers in 150 minutes altogether instead of just 15 customers under the former arrangement.

Since Lulu, the receptionist is idle most of the time, she can be assigned the billing of customers to enable the stylists to serve more customers with concentration.

Step-by-step explanation:

Activities and time:

Shampooing = 10 min

Hairstyling = 15 min

Billing = 5 min

Total time per customer = 30 minutes

If billing is assigned to Lulu, the total time per customer reduces to 25 (30 - 5) minutes, thus saving 5 minutes of the stylist's time or an equivalent of 5/30 or 16.7% of their time per customer.