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FOR COURSES IN:
Operations Management Service Management Strategy
Operations Management Simulation
BENIHANA V2
by W. Earl Sasser, Jr., Harvard Business School, and Ricardo
Ernst, Georgetown University
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Version 2 UPDATED EDITION
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Students explore the principles of operations and service
management while working through a series of challenges set during
a simulated evening at a busy Benihana restaurant. Customers start
in the bar area for drinks and then move into the dining room where
chefs prepare food right at the table. Each challenge allows
students to uncover how aspects of the restaurant operation
contribute to profitability. A final challenge
requires students to consider the lessons learned and design a
strategy that maximizes utilization, throughput, and total profit
for the evening. The second release of this single-player
simulation retains the immersive experience of the original while
enhancing the animation and analysis tools available to students
and the debrief tools for instructors.
Operations Management Simulation: Benihana V2
hbsp.harvard.edu
An interactive animation shows the flow of customers from the
bar into the dining room.
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ADMINISTRATION TOOLS ON NEXT PAGE
UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGES
The simulation has six challenges. The first five challenges
allow students to explore individual principles of operations
management related to demand variability and process variability.
Customers arriving in the restaurant at varying times create demand
variability while the variations in dining time for groups of
customers creates process variability.
The first five challenges include:
Batching dining room customersCustomers can be sent from the bar
into the dining room in groups of eight or they can be seated based
on the size of their party.
Designing the optimal bar sizeThe bar is a source of revenue as
well as a place for customers to wait until their table is ready.
Changing the bar size also changes the capacity of the dining
room.
Reducing dining timeThe chefs can be encouraged to alter the
dining time during peak and off- peak periods.
Boosting demand with promo-tionsAdvertising campaigns, special
promotions, and an earlier opening time can boost demand and prompt
customers to dine at off-peak hours.
Altering batching strategies at different timesUsing different
batching strategies for early customers, peak-period customers, and
late customers can have different effects on utilization and
profitability.
The sixth challenge asks students to consider the previous
results to come up with the best overall restaurant strategy for
maximizing profitability. Students must consider a balance between
demand variability and process variability to achieve an optimal
solution.
Students review data generated in each challenge to determine
the drivers of profitability.
VIEWING RESTAURANT DATA AND ANIMATION
For each challenge, students choose options to explore and the
simulation generates data for 20 runs representing 20 possible
evenings at the restaurant. The dinner and drink costs in the
simulation match the Benihana of Tokyo case study (#673057) to
facilitate teaching the two together.
For any run, students can analyze the data or view animation of
customer traffic through the restaurant. The animation helps
students identify bottlenecks and better understand how customers
flow through the bar into the dining room.
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Customer service is available 8 am to 6 pm ET, Monday through
FridayPhone: 1-800-545-7685 (1-617-783-7600 outside the U.S. and
Canada)Fax: 617-783-7666Email: [email protected]:
hbsp.harvard.edu
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A comprehensive Teaching Note covers key learning
objectives:
Analyzing capacity, demand rates, cycle time, and throughput in
a service operation
Understanding how batching strategies improve throughput and how
increasing capacity improves bottlenecks
Minimizing or eliminating demand variability (cyclical,
stochastic, batch size, and service time)
Optimizing multiple variables in an operation and ensuring
consistency in the overall strategy
FREE TRIAL ACCESSVisit hbsp.harvard.edu
A Free Trial allows full access to the entire simulation and is
available to Premium Educators.
Premium Educator access is a free service for faculty at
degree-granting institutions and allows access to Educator Copies,
Teaching Notes, Free Trials, course planning tools, and special
student pricing.
Product #7003 | Single-player | Seat Time: 90 minutes |
Developed in partnership with Forio Online Simulations
Administration Tools for Faculty
Detailed class summary results allow faculty to discuss the
results of each challenge with students.
ALSO AVAILABLEIN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
New to this edition:
NEW DesignUpdated visuals and enhanced animation allow students
to systematically explore the elements of profitability at a
service organization.
NEW Teaching MaterialsAn updated Teaching Note reduces the time
required for faculty to learn the simulation.
NEW Dynamic Debrief SlidesInstructors can download
presentation-ready debrief slides of class results including best
strategy results.
NEW Simulation StatusSimulation status information can be viewed
from within the instructors coursepack and from within the
simulation itself. This includes whether the simulation is open to
students and the number of runs allowed for the final
challenge.
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