New business sim: 'Benihana' Operations Management Simulation

Our third Harvard Business Publishing business simulation is the Benihana Operations Management simulation (see earlier posts for descriptions of our Pricing and Leadership simulations).  Designed to expand upon teaching points developed in the best-selling Harvard Business School Benihana of Toyko business case, the simulation uses discrete event modeling to simulate customer flow through a typical night at a Benihana restaurant. Students explore learning principles in operations and service management including the impact of a batching strategy, optimizing capacity utilization, managing cycle time, and strategies for smoothing demand and process variability.

To quickly recap the product design of these web-based simulations, they are meant to be topical in nature within a single discipline so that faculty might use them to focus learning on some key objectives.  They are also designed to be extremely usable from both the user and administrator perspectives.  They are designed to be played and debriefed all within 2-3 hours, depending on the complexity of the configuration chosen by the administrator. More information on our our thoughts about simulation design and effectiveness can be found elsewhere on this blog -- click on the "simulations and games" category on the home page.

Development Model & Simulation Authors

The development model includes a three-pronged approach:

• Our Harvard Business Publishing product development team serves as the product authority and contributes project management and product line design.
• Our simulation partners at Forio Business Simulations provide their Broadcast simulation platform (a feature-rich, web-based platform) as well as system dynamics modeling and business consulting experience.
• Harvard Business Publishing selects faculty authors to serve as subject matter experts and content authorities.

In this instance Georgetown University professor Ricardo Ernst at the McDonough School of Business had already developed a prototype of this simulation for use in his Operations Management classes.  His prototype served as the foundation for this simulation, enhanced and informed by the team which also included original case author and HBS Professor W. Earl Sasser, Will Glass-Husain of Forio, and Nicole Harris and Heide Abelli at Harvard Business Publishing.

Simulation Synopsis

From the Facilitator's Guide:

The objective of the teaching plan presented herein is to help students systematically unearth the elements of Benihana’s profitability, determining how each aspect of the operation contributes to superior financial performance. In the process, students learn how to apply important principles of operations management and become familiar with the vernacular of this management discipline. Students come to realize that terms such as throughput capacity, demand variability, capacity utilization, and service time apply not only to a manufacturing environment but also just as aptly to a service operation. They also learn how variability negatively impacts an operation. Possibly the most important message the simulation conveys to the student is simply that effective Operations Management practices can have a powerful impact on a firm’s profitability, including a firm that competes in the service sector of the economy.

The simulation is a tool that helps students unlock in a quantitative manner the secrets of Benihana's profitability and helps them digest key operational insights. It is organized as a series of challenges, each with a different set of options for managing the operation and demand. In all of these challenges, the goal is to manage the bar and dining area in order to maximize utilization, throughput, and most important, total profit for the evening.

The specific challenges are:

1. Batching Dining Room Customers: How does batching strategy affect throughput?
2. Optimally Designing the Bar: What's the optimum size of the bar for maximum profitability?
3. Reducing Dining Time: What is the optimal dining time across an evening?
4. Boosting Demand with Advertising and Special Programs: How will marketing efforts affect operations and profitability?
5. Scheduling Different Types of Batching at Different Times: How do more complex forms of batching affect operations and profitability?
6. Designing Your Best Strategy (final capstone challenge): What is the best combination to maximize profitability?

Simulation Design

This simulation is designed to provide an engaging, experiential learning environment for students.  The basic architecture includes:

•  a Prepare section which is used once and optionally referred to later by players (and players can be restricted to this section only until an administrator ‘opens’ the full simulation to students);
•  an Analyze section that provides users with current information that they must peruse in order to make effective decisions.

This is a single-player simulation but lends itself well to group analysis/teams as well (pairing up students around a single instance of the simulation).

The Prepare Tab: How to Play screen

The Analyze Tab: Challenge 1 screen.  Users can run and save various scenarios, see summaries of individual and averaged runs, and export summary information to Excel.

Challenge 1 screen -- animation.  Users can choose to run the simulation in animated mode to see the effect of batching on customer dining, on lost customers, etc.

The Analyze Tab: Challenge 2 screen

The Analyze Tab: Challenge 3 screen

The Analyze Tab: Challenge 4 screen

The Analyze Tab: Challenge 5 screen

Features & Learning Objectives

In this online simulation, students play the role of a Benihana manager. Discrete event modeling is used to simulate customer flow through the restaurant. In individual challenges, students make decisions about:

• Managing bar capacity, batching customers, and changing restaurant table layout.
• Implementing marketing initiatives to drive demand.
• Increasing or decreasing length of dining experience.
• Designing the best strategic approach to maximize restaurant profitability.
• A final capstone challenge requires students to design the best overall operations
  management strategy for the restaurant.

A comprehensive Teaching Note covers:

• How to analyze capacity, demand rates, cycle time, and throughput in a service operation.
• How batching strategies improve throughput and the importance of increasing capacity at bottlenecks.
• How to minimize or eliminate demand variabilities (cyclical, stochastic, batch size, and service time).
• How to optimize across multiple variables in an operation and ensure
  consistency in the overall operations strategy.

Simulation Sampling

Educators can sample the simulation as detailed below.  Some access is only provided to qualified educators and trainers who contact HBSP Customer Service as noted.  The full Facilitator's Guide with Teaching Note is available to qualified educators and trainers.

Video overview

• This 11-minute simulation overview video explains the simulation from the student’s perspective as well as the administrator's. It uses voice-over and animated screenshots to step users through the simulation.

Student Experience Login

• http://forio.com/simulation/harvard-benihana-demo
• username/password: user/user
• This will place you into Round 3 of a sample simulation where you can navigate the Prepare, Analyze, and Decide tabs. Note that you will not be able to submit a decision or advance to the next round.

Administrator Login

• To experience the simulation as an administrator, contact HBSP Customer Service:  1-800-545-7685 (outside the U.S. and Canada, 1-617-783-7600) to purchase or request educator access to the simulation:  Benihana Operations Management simulation #2653