Improvement of a Queuing System through Simulation and Lean Methodologies

Details

Supervisors

Rui Figueira, José ; Agrell, Per Joakim

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en Ingénieur de gestion

Abstract

This Dissertation presents a real problem to which a consultancy firm, KICG, was confronted during a project in EDP Stores. As it will be detailed, customers, who currently visit these stores, must endure high waiting times which affects their satisfaction-levels. Not being aligned with EDP’s corporate desire, the company aspires for a more efficient service of its clients. Thus, a tailored framework is hereby proposed to assist on tackling the identified causes and convenes a process that improves the overall performance of the system. The present Dissertation gathered the knowledge from more than 100 sources that enabled a good characterization, understanding and modelling of the system and contributed to the conception of a tailored framework that resorts to a symbiotic result of three research areas: Queuing Theory, Simulation, and Lean. After reading this work, it shall be clear that queues impact everyone on a daily basis, and that, consequently, have a crucial impact on both the welfare and the economy of a country. The proposed framework aims at improving any system’s performance, in this specific case EDP’s, where the goal is to simultaneously increase customers’ satisfaction levels and the system’s performance (monitored by the market’s regulator). Having proved to mitigate existing hazards and to improve the system’s performance, the tailored framework’s output is now being implemented by the firm. Its impact on Bragança’s store performance was simulated after adopting best-practices and redesigning the system’s capacity, leading to an estimated reduction of the waiting time of 76%.