Applebee's is a family restaurant that serves a variety of food in a comfortable family setting for a reasonable price. Many problems are apparent with the layout and operation of their kitchen. Labor is not always properly addressed during the day causing a shortage of work during busier hours. A bottleneck that needs to be addressed is also very apparent during peak hours. Making a few minor changes in the layout, managing labor and relieving the bottleneck operation should increase output and productivity.
             Applebee's operates with a line that includes six cooks during peak hours to prepare food for guest. Three stations are located on line which includes fry side, broil side, and mid. Fry side consist of making salads, frying food, and preparing deserts. Broil side consists of cooking steaks, hamburgers, chicken and fish. The mid is the station that puts the whole order together and sales the ticket to the expo. Expo then gets all the entrees together to be sent to their respective tables. Meals are supposed to be prepared in a ten minute time frame from the point that the order is placed to the time it reaches expo. The food should arrive at the table ready to eat within fourteen minutes after the order is placed. The process that Applebee's has is pretty sound but needs just a few things added to tweak its performance so that workers are not getting in the way of one another while still being able to perform at an effective rate.
             The line is set up in such a way that everything runs through the mid which is the middle person in the line. They are the position that is in charge of the line and getting food out on time. Servers who have mistakes on orders talk to the mid to get there orders fixed. Mid is also in charge of making sure that the order is ready when the ticket is sold to expo. The layout with mid being in the middle causes a problem. Broil side requires fries to put with there hamburgers. Fry sid...