Business Process Management - Gas Station Case study
In the past 3 years we have seen in Portugal exponential growth of retail business at gas stations. Although the concept is not new, it started 20 years ago in A1 highway, SONAE together with GALP were responsible for the growth of this business concept. Some stores even have become small coffee shops, where customers stop to drink coffee and read the newspaper headlines. The main problem is the difficulty in serving customers, especially at peak times, mainly early morning, when people stop to fill up the car and some drink an espresso and buy a newspaper. There are not enough people to meet payment requests and to serve coffee, and sometimes all the people available are serving coffee and no one is receiving the payments, or vice versa. In order to be served inside the store you need to pay everything simultaneously. You cannot pay fuel first and coffee latter (is this a process constraint?). Business impact. First, fuel sales decrease (a huge loss) once cycle time is ...