Executive Summary
My father, Robert owns a Baskin Robbins franchise in Scotland. He is always looking for new ways to improve the business, and his income. The store is small, but has a prime location close to the city center. Most of the day-time customers are passing the store on foot (usually returning from town). The night-time customers almost always drive to the store. The store currently has 10 employees, and most of them are students.
The weather in Scotland is very temperamental, and it plays a big part in how much business the store generates. Typically, demand goes down during inclement weather, but the labor supply stays the same. Also, when it is unusually hot, large queues will form and customers become impatient and sometime leave. The problem I hope to remedy is over and under-staffing. If Robert could better predict demand for ice-cream, he could avoid over and under-staffing.
Robert does periodically check the weather, but he does not gather enough information to persuade him to adjust the staff rotation.
The VBA program which I designed pulls together weather data from multiple web sources. The program standardizes the data and compiles a weather summary. This summary averages out the forecast temperatures and chance of precipitation from the different web sources. The summary is then translated into staffing recommendations. These recommendations are obtained using thresholds for varying weather conditions. The user will have the option of viewing a 5-day forecast and also a 24-hour forecast.
Robert now has a toll that can improve the efficiency of the store, improve his profits, and take a process that would have taken him 20 minutes down to a few seconds.
Files:
Write-up: http://files.gove.net/shares/files/10f/bgoldie/WriteUp.pdf
Program: http://files.gove.net/shares/files/10f/bgoldie/Rotation_Recommend.xlsm
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