Service Robots in Hospitality Industry: processes analysis of restaurants with full table service in Helsinki.

Abstract

Companies from various economic sectors use robots to enhance operational processes, optimize their costs, create customer experience, and expand their service capacity. Processes are the core of businesses. Therefore by constantly working on improving business operations, firms are able to make better managerial decisions, improve customer experiences and lower costs. This thesis intends to enhance the overall understanding of the processes in full table service restaurants by introducing a robot in a restaurant. Therefore, the main purpose of this thesis is to find out the circumstances under which robot implementation might be feasible. The following work is performed through the semi-structured interviewing characteristic of qualitative research. To assess the current activities process performance measurement frameworks were evaluated and the Devil’s quadrangle was selected as the research framework. Goals were chosen and processed through four dimensions of time, cost, quality, and flexibility. Interviews were color-coded and analyzed to come to conclusions. As follows, the main findings of the research are that theoretically, all of the processes in the restaurant can be automated, including the serving tasks. Nevertheless, the robotics enhancement and the Finnish hospitality environment are not yet ready for the introduction of bots, due to the concept being yet underdeveloped. The researcher also considers the limitations of the thesis in the form of the small sample size as well as opinion bias and urges for future in-depth analysis of the processes.