1. IE 431 Senior Design project
Addressing Line Queuing and Wait Times in University Dining Courts
A project for Purdue dining and catering
Simran Ahuja, Kyle Alvarado, Peiran Gu, & Jessica Stahly
IE 431 Team 21

2. Student FOCUSed design
Fostering Student success and awareness
Making student satisfaction a top priority

3. Topics to be discussed Introduction Project Management
Project Approach
Results, Conclusions, and Recommendations
Summary

4. Introduction
Overview
Assigned to work on the line queuing in the lobbies of the dining courts
Purdue Dining and Catering priorities:
Comfortable line waits
Waiting indoors, out of elements
Shorter waits
Inform students
Help students know when lines are long
Help students make informed choices of where to dine

5. Project Management
Gantt Chart

6. Approach Observation at the dining courts
Steps to success
Observation at the dining courts
-counting line lengths and rate of individuals entering dining court
-observing student habits when going to dining courts
2. Discussion
- team meetings to discuss major problems observed
3. Data Collection
Teamwork and Solution Finding
- Simran and Ted concentrated on solving the line queuing problem
- Kyle focused on interpreting and drawing conclusions from data
- Jessica concentrated on the prototype mobile application to inform and interact with students
5. Resulting Recommendations….

7. Line queuing
OVerview
- Conducted informal surveys with students that use the dining courts - Feedback showed that Ford and Wiley dining courts are the most problematic for students (long lines, busyness, etc.) - First step towards line queuing: measuring the dimensions of Ford and Wiley dining courts - AutoCAD used to draw the lobby layouts
Sketch of Wiley lobby dimensions

8. Line queuing The team had to keep in mind the various constraints:
Ford dining court
The team had to keep in mind the various constraints:
Leave space near the ATM machines so students withdrawing money don’t feel uncomfortable
Leave space for sitting areas
Route the line away from On-the-go entrance
The main problem with the current system is that the lobby is spacious, but the organization of the line can be improved

9. Line queuing Recommendation:
FoRd dining court
Recommendation:
Lines begin at the West side of the dining court:
Most of the residence halls (Owen, Tarkington, Wiley and Hilltop) are on the west side of the court.
As compared to the current queuing, our line queuing can have eight more lines
Added space for more people
“On-the-Go”
“On-the-Go”
West
West
South
South

10. Line queuing Recommendation: Entry through north lobby door
Wiley dining court
Recommendation:
Entry through north lobby door
Exit through south lobby door
North entrance to lobby typically used more frequently than south
Doors entering Dining area:
middle door can be used for entering
the south most door will be used for exiting
north most door can be locked and this space will be used for more queues.
As compared to the current system, this would give space for one additional queue.
North
South

11. Line queuing Alternative Recommendation:
Wiley dining court
North
Alternative Recommendation:
In addition to these solutions, another solution includes having two swipe machines.
Would be most useful when the dining court first opens to get the first rush of students through the door
Could reduce the line length
Idea: One line for students using Purdue ID and other that accepts both Purdue ID and credit or debit cards
Useful for future: more students, more seats in dining court
South

12. Data Analysis
Goal: ability to make Informed decisions with the info learned from analysis
Given 2 files:
“Micro DC Counts 13”
minute by minute swipe data for March 2014
Used Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, MiniTab, and SAS software
Data cleaning/Data mining

13. Data Analysis
Intuitive Findings from the data
Hillenbrand’s highest attended dinner is on Thursday nights
Double swipe night
Wiley hosts the most attended Saturday dinner
location
Friday nights are least attended dinner on campus
Social activities, traveling, relaxing

14. Data Analysis Organized data into warm and cold month categories
Impact of Temperature and Climate Change
Organized data into warm and cold month categories
Separated by dining court and meal
Ran a Student’s T-test (2 sample t-test) to compare difference in mean
H0 : µ = 0 vs. Ha: µ ≠ 0
Results: attendance at majority of dining courts were statistically significantly lower during the cold months

15. Data Analysis
Impact of Temperature and Climate Change

16. Data Analysis
Impact of Temperature and Climate Change
NOT statistically significant: Earhart lunch, Earhart dinner, Windsor dinner, and Hillenbrand dinner
Reasoning and factors

17. Data Analysis Used minute by minute swipe data for March 2014
Attendance Trends
Used minute by minute swipe data for March 2014
Data cleansing, ran queries, sorted and organized data into usable format
Separated into 10 minute bins for graphing
Objective: to learn from dining court trends

18. Mobile application
Prototype/design idea
Create a new mobile application or add to an existing application
Interactive
Ways for students to report “Fullness” of each dining court
Tool for YOU to get feedback from students
Similar to other social network sites (Twitter)

19. Summary Takeaway Line Queuing:
Ford: Space for more people in the lobby
Wiley: The space for the line can be enlarged inside the lobby, and one additional queue may be added
Data Analysis:
Difference between cold and warm months
Attendance patterns at dining courts
Wiley busiest Sat. dinner
Hillenbrand busiest night: Thursday (double swipe steak)
Friday night dinner is least attended
Mobile application:
Create new or update current application
Interactive for students
Can see busyness, share thoughts, provide feedback to YOU

20. Thank you for your help with this project, especially Sharlee.
QUESTIONS?