A Multi-agent Simulation Study for Congestion Minigation in a University Campus Restaurant

Campus restaurants in many universities in Japan are crowded during lunch time. Managers of the restaurants usually consider to introduce some methods for the mitigation of the congestion and it is difficult to execute the introductions instantly due to the cost of the adoption. Numerical analysis on the effect of the methods will help the managers to determine if the methods should be adopted. In this study, a multi-agent simulation model is proposed to estimate the congestion at lunch break in a campus restaurant in our university. The model represents a series of customer’s behaviors in the order and pick-up area in the restaurant and interactions among customers. Simulation study estimates the effect of introductions of new layouts on the congestion and the influence of the customers who make an order slowly at an order window.