Case Article—Chick-fil-A Drive-Through: Managing Congestion with Discrete Event Simulation

This case investigates the drive-through congestion of a fast-food restaurant with a series of learning modules inspired by computational operations research. Motivated by the renovation of a local Chick-fil-A restaurant, this case evaluates the effectiveness of various drive-through designs in reducing congestion-related problems such as long wait times and large car lines. The objective is to introduce students to a typical operational decision-making process that includes (1) modeling the drive-through operations, (2) encoding the service process using discrete event simulation, (3) predicting congestion metrics with simulators, and (4) prescribing optimal design based on simulator-generated predictions. With minimum mathematical analysis and a flexible amount of programming, this case showcases a cohesive decision-making pipeline and has great potential to spur students’ interest in operations management through a well-known congestion problem. Supplemental Material: The Teaching Note and course materials are available at https://www.informs.org/Publications/Subscribe/Access-Restricted-Materials .