Thrifty Case Study

Thrifty Case Study

In the year 1971, William Lobeck founded Thrifty Car Rental and initially named it Scot Hire. Currently, the organization operates in 92 locations across the United States and the United Kingdom. Thrifty’s clientele is mostly business people and tourists because it operates off-site from the airport terminals. Additionally, the organization’s fleet consists of fuel-efficient subcompact and compact vehicles.

Queuing Systems

            Customers waiting for the provision of services from one or more specialists make up a queue. Queuing systems appear in multiple forms. First, the servers can cater for numerous customers at a time for instance in trains and busses (George & Xia, 2011). Second, the customer may decide not to seek the service, but instead, the service should find the customer such as in the case of police and firefighting. Third, the service can constitute distinct queue stages to distract the customers from long waits.

Queuing System Essential Features

Scholars depict queuing systems through five features. They are the calling population, arrival procedure, queue arrangement, queue order, and the examination process. A calling population refers to the group of people that is the source of service organization’s customers. On the other hand, the arrival process entails all the activities of the firm including the handling of new arrivals and customers. Further, queue configuration focuses on queue types and the customers’ reactions to their structure. The three types of queues include a take-a-number system, multiple queues, and single queues. A queue discipline is the management’s policy that assists in the selection of next client in line. Commonly, many firms base a queue discipline in a first come, first serve policy. Lastly, the service process entails the service time distribution and the management’s arrangement of server behavior or policies.

Customer Counter

Regarding Thrifty’s calling population, two sub-populations exist. The first one is a special service for pre-arrangement customers. The second is for clients without any arrangements. Tourists and business people can fall within any of these two groups. On the arrival process, the peak time demand reflects the airport’s outbound and inbound flight schedule. Therefore, a section of attendants exclusively serve customers returning vehicles and those with pre-arrangements. Given that the customers arrive randomly, the process is static. However, it can be dynamic particularly when the customers pre-order customized services.

On customer counter’s queue configuration, it is clear that Thrifty applies a multiple queue system to guarantee fairness. The employees serve customers according to their arrival times. Besides, the clients have an option of selecting their unique services through pre-arrangements. Thrifty uses a static queue discipline of first come, first serve. Still, the firm employs a dynamic queue discipline for clients that order separate arrangements. Regarding the service process, the clients arrive at the organization’s premises and waits for service. During the peak and off-peak times, the number of customers fluctuates significantly. There are specific stations to handle the pre-arrangements. For individuals that return vehicles, there are specific times for closing or opening service lanes.

Garage

The calling subpopulations at the garage involve returning vehicles from customers. The employees redirect some of the returned cars to a special maintenance section as others receive routine attention. Notably, the entire process is infinite. The arrival process involves the inspection of returned cars and subsequent payment for services. It is a dynamic process because customers rent vehicles for a specified period of time, after which both parties must ratify or renew the contract. Further, the garage employs a three-way design multiple queue system. Two of them are for normal maintenance and one for a special car servicing.  The approach ensures a flexible and differentiated customer service provision.

Regarding the garage’s queue discipline, the fleet supervisor prioritizes incoming cars due to the firm’s demand and reserve policy. If a client needs a car within 6 hours, it gets a preferential servicing treatment. The garage service process fluctuates as per demand hence is dynamic. The processing of a vehicle from incoming to outgoing delivery desk involves six stages. First, an employee confirms the odometer reading. Then he refuels and confirms the fuel change. Third, he inspects the visual change and conducts priority assessment at the fourth stage. In stage 5, he does the maintenance assessment before a final check-out.

Car Wash

The calling population at the car wash is homogenous given that the service is similar at all time. Consequently, it is an infinite process due to successive repetitions. In the arrival process, a worker moves the vehicle to the car wash, where two employees clean both the exterior and interior. The order is static because of the variation in the arrival rate. The queue is single since both employees work a vehicle at a time. Similar to the customer counter, the policy for queue discipline is first come first serve.

There are four stages of service process in the car wash. A team of two workers washes and rinse the car’s interiors to ensure fuel tank top off. Thereafter, they place the car in a storage lot. The attendant calls of a driver who takes the vehicle to the client’s rental area. Clearly, the service process is static because service rates vary (Papier & Thonemann, 2012).

References

George, D. K., & Xia, C. H. (2011). Fleet-Sizing and Service Availability for A Vehicle Rental System via Closed Queueing Networks. European Journal of Operational Research, 211(1), 198-207.

Papier, F., & Thonemann, U. W. (2012). Queuing Models for Sizing and Structuring Rental Fleets. Transportation Science, 42(3), 302-317.