All case studies
Starbucks Coffee
Store Capacity & Throughput Analysis
A process and wait-time study of store operations — flowcharts, process analysis and queuing theory applied to identify bottlenecks and recommend changes that increased throughput and improved service levels.
- When
- January – May 2026
- My role
- Led a team of 6
- Discipline
- Operations
Team of 6led end to end
Situation
A store's wait time is the symptom everyone notices; the bottleneck causing it is rarely the station customers are looking at. Our team was asked to analyze store operations and recommend improvements — which first required establishing where the constraint actually was.
Analysis
- Mapped store operations as flowcharts, so the process being analyzed was the process actually being run rather than the one people describe.
- Ran process analysis and wait-time analysis to locate where work queued and where capacity sat idle.
- Applied queuing theory to the measured wait times, turning an observation about slowness into a structural explanation of it.
- Tested workflow changes against the identified constraint rather than against the busiest-looking station.
Outcome
- Recommendations that increased throughput and improved customer service levels.
- Improved resource utilization by moving effort to the station that was actually binding.
- A repeatable method — map, measure, locate the constraint, then change one thing — rather than a one-off set of suggestions.
Tools
- Flow Charts
- Process Analysis
- Wait-Time Analysis
- Queuing Theory
- Team Leadership