Bottleneck Issues at Work

Flowchart Memo

A bottleneck occurs in the cinema auditorium when multiple films let out all at the same time. As there is only about 20 to 25 minute gap between the end of the film and the start of the next showing, ushers have a limited amount of time to get into each auditorium following the end of the film to clean it so as to allow patrons to be seated. When several films let out all at once, ushers do not have sufficient time to clean out each auditorium so that it is ready for the next set of patrons. They will focus on cleaning 1 or 2 auditoriums, but meanwhile a large group of patrons will be forced to wait in the lobby, causing a bottleneck in the lobby area, where it becomes difficult for other customers to get where they are going, whether it is to an auditorium that is open or to the concession stand where they desire to buy concessions or to the ticket booth so that they can buy tickets to a show. This bottleneck problem is depicted in Flowchart 1.

Even with effective crowd control measures in place, the large group of patrons can quickly become a problem because of overflow and the way that bottleneck can deter patrons from seeking to purchase items at the concession stand, which is where the cinema derives its main source of profits. Decreased sales at the concession stand lead to decreased revenues for the cinema. Busy times of the day and evening should be accompanied by high revenue at the concession stand, but bottleneck causes patrons to turn away from the stand because of the way the crowds overflow the crowd control measures and create veritable chaos in the lobby. Few patrons want to navigate that chaos and as the concession stand is not as busy as it should be.

I would like to explore how to best solve this issue. One solution that I believe would be effective is to stagger the showings of films so that for those which are going to be popular there is enough time for ushers to get in and clean them and have them ready to be seated before the next film lets out and its auditorium requires cleaning. For example, instead of seven popular and busy films letting out all at once, giving ushers approximately 25 minutes to clean all seven, while patrons overflow the waiting area and cause congestion and bottleneck in the lobby and around the concession stand, one film should release at a time with 15 minutes in between each release. This would set back each scheduled start time 15 minutes for each film as well, and this would mean that patrons are not all gathering at once to get in for all seven different films but are gathering at staggered times, which will allows the bottleneck issue to be adequately addressed: instead of having 300 patrons waiting in the lobby for admittance for seven different films all at once, there might be 50 patrons waiting at a time and for a far lesser duration, which is a much more manageable number and time frame.

I would like permission to implement the solution to this problem by working with the manager to schedule the showings of next week’s films based on expected box office draw for each film as indicated by polls published online and followed closely by the film industry. Based on which films are likely to be busiest, and using the 15-minute staggered release method described above, I would be happy to help the manager create a schedule of films so that their release times throughout the day and night provide ushers with a 15 minute window of cleaning time before another busy film lets out. The idea here is that this will help to reduce the bottleneck experienced every weekend in our auditorium.

This would be a pilot project so that we could determine whether or not the staggering method illustrated in the Flowchart 2 is an effective method of addressing our bottleneck problem. We could test out this method for two weeks to see if the bottleneck issues that are present in the lobby are solved or at least reduced by any discernible measure. Directly observing how well the bottleneck is reduced would be one way of measuring the effect—but another way would be to look at sales receipts from the concession stand at the end of the day to see if the expected or desired totals are actually being met in sales. If the bottleneck problem is solved, there should be a pick-up in sales.