Learning Curve Theory and the Pizza Simulation

Research on Learning Curve and the Pizza Simulation

Learning curve theory suggests that the rate of learning slows as people repeatedly perform the same actions. This theory further argues that by changing the context of the learning one might be able to create a process of continuous learning (Chase Jacobs and Aquilano). This is seen in the "Pizza Simulation" as a new restaurant manager attempts to speed up the service of the restaurant.

Several decisions were made in the process of the simulation that could have been done earlier or that should have been done without the interference of the owner. For example, rather than maintaining the manual ovens the decision should have been made to switch to the conveyor ovens alone prior to the reduction in service times. This not only would have allowed staff more time to learn how to use the ovens effectively (since learning decreases after the initial encounter with new material). In theory, this would increase the effectiveness of the employees in relation to serving and cooking time.

Another change that could have been made would have been in the process of switching to the Menupoint system. As it stood in the simulation, only the servers were trained in the use of the new system. Because the restaurant business has notoriously fast turnover and often employees can be unreliable, one method by which service speed could have been increased is if the shift managers and store managers were trained on the new system. This would have sped payment and ordering processes up even further in that management could have taken orders and processed payments if needed be when they were short staffed.

While adding the takeout window did greatly improve things adding local delivery at least during lunch, and on weekends could have significantly improved sales. It also would have reduced pressure on waitstaff since people would be more likely to order takeout from home.

The main thing that this seems to say about the learning curve when applied in management is that as the learning process continues a person is less likely to notice small details that could be fixed or changed in order to ensure continuous improvement. Without this improvement learning does not occur. One example of this is that it was not noticed until nearly the end of the simulation that would have been noticed sooner if learning had been continuous was the issue of the conveyor oven in comparison to the manual ovens. If my learning process had not been slowing down, I would have associated the slowness of the manual ovens with the idea that the faster conveyor oven was more than fast enough to handle the extra orders.

The initial data was acceptable in that it illustrated quickly learning occurs in the beginning of the learning process. At the beginning of the process it was very noticeable how even small changes or mistakes altered the performance of the restaurant. In the second simulation this was not as noticeable in that my learning curve had caused by ability to notice these details to slow down so that I was not noticing the small details any longer.

References

Chase, R. B., Jacobs, F. R., & Aquilano, N. J. Operations management for competitive advantage (11th ed.). New York : McGraw Hill/Irwin.

Pete, A. The Learning Curve.

Zangwill Willard I. and Kantor Paul B. Toward a Theory of Continuous Improvement and the Learning Curve. Management Science, 44(7), 910-920.