COORDINATION THEORY - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 108

Figure 7.3 Model of High-Level Dependencies and Coordination Mechanisms for Restau-

rant Service

Arrive Leave

Seat

Bus and Set

Cook Eat

Monitor

Order Pay

Serve

Alternative Processes

Having identified the dependencies, we can now use the taxonomies of dependencies and related
coordination mechanisms to imagine alternative processes. In particular, we can look for processes
that rely on ICT support, using the models to suggest the coordination functions that the systems
need to perform.
For example, different actors might perform the order and transfer coordination mechanisms.
In many busy restaurants, drinks and food are delivered by “runners” waiting in the kitchen rather
than by the waiter or waitress who took the order. Similarly, rather than walking an order to the
kitchen, waitstaff in many restaurants enter orders on a computer system that transmits them to
the kitchen. Some restaurants even provide waitstaff with wireless terminals with which to trans-
mit orders from table to kitchen. One could imagine providing such a terminal to the customer;
orders would then be directly transmitted to the kitchen and delivered when they are ready, thus
eliminating the role of the waitress or waiter, that is, disintermediation of the relationship between
kitchen and customer (Benjamin and Wigand, 1995). (Indeed, we saw such a system in one Internet
café: Customers visited the café's Web site to place orders for coffee and cakes, which were then
delivered by the waitstaff.)
Restaurants have employed a large variety of information systems to manage the precedence
subdependency between activities. In Malone and Crowston's (1994) analysis, a precedence depen-
dency can be managed in one of two ways: either the person performing the first activity can notify
the person performing the second that a resource is ready, or the second can monitor the per-
formance of the first. A number of mechanisms have been devised to notify waitstaff that food is
ready in the kitchen, ranging from a cook's shouting “Order up!” to bells, numbered lights on the
wall, and, most recently, pagers. In the absence of a notification mechanism, actors must instead
spend time monitoring the status of the previous activity. For example, a bused table, ready for
customers, waits until the host or hostess notices it. A paging system can be used to let the buser
notify the host or hostess that a table has been bused and is ready. Similarly, the waitstaff can
monitor the kitchen to notice when an order is ready or the kitchen staff can page the wait staff to
notify them that it is. Once a suitable notification system is available, it can be employed at all
stages of the process. For example, waitstaff can be paged when new customers arrive at a table;