Title: Staff scheduling in restaurants where hall staff and robots cooperate

Authors: Takashi Tanizaki; Takeshi Shimmura; Nobutada Fujii; Antonio Oliveira Nzinga Rene

Addresses: Kindai University, 1 Umenobe, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima, 739-2116, Japan ' Ritsumeikan University, 1-1-1 Nojihigashi, Kusatsu, Shiga, 525-8577, Japan ' Graduate School of System Informatics, Kobe University, 1-1 Rokkodai-cho, Nadaku, Kobe, Hyogo, 657-8501, Japan ' Graduate School of Engineering, Toyama Prefectural University, 5180 Kurokawa, Imizu, Toyama, 939-0398, Japan

Abstract: The number of companies introducing robots as part of their workforce has been increasing in the recent years. One aim of such companies is to have robots perform low value-added work, and humans perform high value-added work. This objective also generally applies to the service industry. Increasing the number of repeat customers and improving profitability are required in the restaurant business. Furthermore, customer satisfaction (CS), employee satisfaction (ES) and management satisfaction (MS) must be simultaneously improved. However, these three indices are in a trade-off relationship. Based on the abovementioned background, this study proposes the modelling of the staff scheduling problem in restaurants to maximise the weighted sum of the CS, ES, and MS values, where hall staff and robots cooperate, as a set covering problem. The simulation results show that increasing the utilisation of robots for low value-added work and hall staff for high value-added work with customer contact contributes to improvements in CS, ES, and MS in restaurants.

Keywords: staff scheduling; set covering problem; customer satisfaction; employee satisfaction; management satisfaction; process modelling; robot; service industry; restaurant business; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSPM.2020.112467

International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling, 2020 Vol.15 No.6, pp.571 - 583

Received: 02 Aug 2018
Accepted: 13 Oct 2019
Published online: 19 Jan 2021 *

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