Company and product information

Infrastructure University Kuala Lumpur is one of university in Malaysia that provides

educational services to integrate both hard and soft aspects of infrastructure aspire to produce

technopreneurs and skilled manpower with outstanding communication, technological and

managerial skills.

enhanced with up-to-date academic facilities, and tutored by highly qualified lecturers among

whom are industry practitioners, IUKL strives to ensure high quality education in areas of

Engineering, Business, Communication, Language Studies, Architecture, Biotechnology,

Information Technology and many more.

As a subsidiary of Protasco Berhad, a company listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia,

IUKL is committed in engineering the future of tomorrow’s leaders. IUKL’s dedication in

providing quality education has helped many students in acquiring the necessary knowledge,

skills, and hands-on expertise in becoming respected practitioners in various fields. Guided

by the University’s motto “For Knowledge, For Humanity”, IUKL is striving to ensure that

each student is thoroughly equipped and empowered to meet future challenges by preparing

them holistically today.

IUKL cafeteria, is one of the place that IUKL has provided to students in order to fulfill their

needs as student. This place is important in term of fulfilling students’ need, either eat or

drink, students can do it in this place with affordable prices and without any distance

problem. It opens 24 hours for student who are staying around the campus such as Unipark

Condomunium or IUKL hostels. Not only eat, IUKL cafeteria is where students can make an

appointment to do group assignments outside work hours, and doing it inside the cafeteria.

Apart from foods, IUKL keep its place to be clean by placing its cleaner around in every time

including midnight where is not a lots of students only will appear to eat or doing anything

else. It’s also has several spot to do wash hand for students who will wash their hand after

they eat, and it has public toilets for male and female in order to fulfill students’ need.

Problem analysis and Customers’ expectation

With all those features, there is some shortages that need to look and resolve to make it better

than before and to prevent any complain from students about the place. To make a lots of

improvements, it need factors that is defining the problems, without any problem identified,

improvements cannot achieve its top point and maximize the process.

Problem identified in IUKL cafeteria can be various type, it needs time, funds and a lots

effort from management. Before management consider of its improvements, management has

to analyze the benefits and its lack toward both stack holder which is managements and

students. We are more focusing on technology context which is to automate to add some

features inside that is to support the improvements in IUKL cafeteria. Thus, these are all the

problems identified:

1. Ordering system and student queues

In term of ordering foods, often time students has to queue to order the foods, it does not take

long time to make a queue or either ordering foods, but try to look modern cafeteria, make a

queue to pay and take foods is better than queues to order and still students has to be await to

take their foods to the tables, not all of the students having long break time, almost half of

them had short time to have a lunch or to eat meal while they are having a break time.

Indeed, ordering foods isn’t take too long, but sometimes because of queuing foods make it

longer time to deliver our foods (Table 1.1). Thus, this problem can be consideration to

managements of IUKL to make improvements on this side with automation.

The time customers spent their time to queuing is consider wasted to those students who are

having short break such as 30 minutes or even 15 minutes. The purpose of queueing here is

to interact with cashier to order the foods and make payment, then another queuing to wait

process of foods to be ready to take it to tables, It such a wasteful time here while having

short break in class.

Table 1.1 Time spent for queuing to order the foods is wasted time for a student who are having short

time break such as 15 minutes.

In this era, every places need to have integrated technology to fulfill stack holders’, the

problem here is queuing foods that make it longer to take it to tables. What if this place need

to have integrated technology to resolve the problem above, it will make this cafeteria to be

modern cafeteria, but the managements of IUKL has to concern and consider about the funds

that they will spend and the benefit to them.

But if this problem solved by integrated technology through automation, it will make the

students more satisfied to study in IUKL which they can maintain their time while they are

taking a break and having modern café which is not all the university has it.

With all these problem above, customers’ expect to management of IUKL to be aware of this

problem which is consuming a lots of time if students has no long break, not only students

but probably it applied to the teacher who had no breakfast in earlier time while having

morning class with continuous class after.

2. Student’s payment process

Inside IUKL cafeteria, the payment process of most food providers are using traditional

payment which is not the criteria of modern cafeteria, using cash isn’t the best way in

nowadays because the instant way to make payment is already existed in this century.

Modern cafeteria should have digital payment system to process digital money through cards

or any other tools (but normally is some kind of cards). Unfortunately, most of the foods

provider in IUKL cafeteria does not have that payment system, so in process of payment all

students or customers has to pay with cash and receiving coins for their change.

People nowadays, often times they are very lazy to having coins in their pocket. They prefer

not to have them at all or give it to cashier if they have a change. Thus, traditional payment

can be a problem to modern customers or buyer as they prefer instantly payment or they

don’t want to have a change in coins. Here is some differences between modern customers

and traditional customers in side of their pockets in table 1.2.

Table 1.2 Differences between modern customers and traditional customers in look of their

pocket.

Customers’ expectation here is to apply the integrated payment machine that can use

electronic money through cards or any other tools to support that system. It could be student

identity card as the electronic money, so it would be useful not only to show its identity.

3. Lack of vending machine instant foods

Sometimes, when student does not have any time to buy any foods, they rather chose instant

foods if any. Instant foods usually served in vending machine to making it process to be

instant and easy to use. Unfortunately, in IUKL cafeteria there is no machine such a vending

machine to serve that instant foods, and with that shortage, IUKL cafeteria has a failure to

fulfill what customers or students’ need. It’s not something costly to provide that machine to

students but there is no attention from management about this instant foods.

Not only foods, this vending machine can contain any kind of snacks, drinks and any other

instant foods like cup noodles with hot water on it, likewise, all developed country or modern

café has applied this machine for foods and snacks. Instead, IUKL cafeteria only applied the

machine with drinks only.

Customers’ expectation here to management is to provide vending machine to serve instant

foods to stack holder that passing by cafeteria only causing lack of time. It would be useful

either to students or to lecturers, or even outsider that is visiting in cafetaria.

Automation solutions

Point-of-Sale machine Touchscreen

IUKL can add to the university cafeteria a point of sale

machine, which allowed the student to buy and reload a

smart card that can allow them to make payment at the

casher faster without looking for change or waiting the

balance by touching the card reader after the meal was

priced.

Point-of-Sale Software with Touchscreen.

IUKL cafeteria restaurants can use a pion of

sale software that provide easy menu on the

cashier screen which make the orders

recording much faster and sent the order

directly to the kitchen to be prepared. Also it

can read and recognize the student smart

card and use it to male payment.

Cold food and snacks vending machines.

If you are hungry at the middle of the

night and the cafe restaurants are closed it

will be no problem anymore if IUKL

management or investors can install Cold

food and snacks vending machines in the

IUKL cafe. Which is also can use the smart

card to make payment to and it can receive

cash too.

Benefits to stack holders

Faster Serving Lines

Everyone feels the squeeze of serving students quickly and allowing them enough time to eat

their meal and return to classes on time. An automated cafeteria system should speed up the

serving lines by providing a faster way to identify and serve students. Also, a typical

cafeteria automation system allow students to pre-pay for meals and purchases ahead of time;

therefore, there is very little cash to be handled at the point of sale. Less cash handling will

usually result in faster serving lines.

Improved Reporting Abilities

As mentioned above, hundreds of daily cafeteria transactions equal an enormous amount of

data over a period of time. You will need the ability to retrieve this data and output it in a

clear format, without requiring additional staff labor. By eliminating manual counting and

tabulation, a good cafeteria automation system will produce reports that will save one to two

hours of staff labor every week. A good automation system should also result in improved

accuracy by eliminating hand counting and tabulation errors.

Increased “a la carte” Sales

Without an automated system, sales of “a la carte” items are typically handled on a cash

basis. Cash sales are more time-consuming and require more cash to be on-hand for making

change. Because of these drawbacks, many universities cafeterias deprive themselves of the

lucrative financial opportunity available in the form of “a la carte” sales. With an automated

system, many universities are able to quickly process “a la carte” transactions and provide

healthy and appealing food options to students. For example, side salads, chocolate bars, and

soft drinks are healthy and popular items among students. The result is more revenue and a

boost to the cafeteria’s bottom line.

24/7 food and beverage services

Using the Cold food and snacks vending machines IUKL will be to serve it staff and students

with food at any day and any time whatever it was late night or public holiday.

Conclusion

Technology is a wonderful, often magical presence in our daily lives. Think of how quickly

we have gone from being in awe of the use of computers to simply taking them for granted.

Beyond these simple tasks, technology has brought amazing efficiencies to school

administrators, teachers, students and parents. When considering a cafeteria automation

solution to address these challenges, it is important to focus on the specific, measurable

improvements you wish to accomplish. In other words, ordering system and student queues,

Student’s payment process and vending machine instant foods. IUKL can face all these

challenges with Automation solutions that can be brought and installed into IUKL cafe, such

as Point-of-Sale machine Touchscreen, Point-of-Sale Software with Touchscreen and Cold

food and snacks vending machines. At the end that will help IUKL with Faster Serving

Lines, Improved Reporting Abilities and provide it staff and students with 24/7 food and

beverage services.