After reviewing the waiting line analysis of Problem 12, the manager of Pete's Market wants to consider one of the following alternatives for improving service. What alterna- tive would you recommend? Justify your recommendation.
a. Hire a second person to bag the groceries while the cash register operator is entering the cost data and collecting money from the customer. With this improved single- channel operation, the service rate could be increased to 30 customers per hour.
Hire a second person to operate a second checkout counter. The two-channel opera- tion would have a service rate of 20 customers per hour for each channel.