Question Removing waiting time....

[access=good]

I need help to remove a problem that is a hindrance to about 50 people. The issue is that there are a group of users that use a computer in the course of their work, but have to wait in queue and select a meal from a list on a piece of paper.
The solution as I see it involves a user selecting a meal option from his desktop (which is connected to an enterprise network) then identifying what time they will be there. The cook then collates all the orders, puts them in time order and starts preparing the meals. The user turns up and identifies there self and their meal is given to them.
They are then billed according to what meal he has had.

 

[binbin]

Hi there,

Upon reading your post, if I understand you correctly, you are asking help in designing a database?

If you are, what I do is make a flow chart of the processes, in each process, I then decide what kind of records I would be keeping and on which table it would belong. The forms and reports comes after.

Based on your flow description, here is my take on the tables:

tblCustomers
>CustomerID (PK, Customer code, this identifies the account)
>FirstName
>LastName

tblMeals
>MealID (PK, Meal code)
>MealName (Meal Description)
>MealCost (Price of meal)
>MealCookTime (How long a the meal is usually cooked, your lead time. You need this as to prevent the customers from picking up the meal within minutes or even seconds of the current time.)

tblMealQueueDate
>QueueDateID (PK, The date of a group of queues.)
>Chef (Optional, chef that was on duty for that day.)

tblMealQueueDetail
>MealQueueID (PK, assigned queue number)
>QueueDateID (Linked to tblMealQueueDate.QueueDateID)
>CustomerID (Linked to tblCustomers.CustomerID, combobox in a form, automatically filled when the user makes an order upon logging-in.)
>MealPickUpTime (Time of pickup. Must be after current time + lead time time.)
>MealID (Linked to MealID, combobox in a form, they choose a meal code)
>MealQueuePrice (Autofilled by MealID combobox.)
>QueueStatus (To be filled by the cook or staff when the transaction has been completed.)

Those are my raw thoughts on one of the many ways you can build your database and should in no way let it restrict you from going another direction.

Other Data Models are available for free.

Hope this helps...

 

[access=good]

BibBin, very many thanks for your raw thoughts, your version of raw is much better than mine!!I will use what you have said and play with it.
I may come back to you if I hit a brick wall, but you have definitely pointed me in the right direction.
Again man thanks.

 

[binbin]

I'm glad it helped you.

You also must not forget the fundamentals of normalization... since I'm fairly new to access myself, I often find my database bloated with unnecessary data.

Allan Browne's site have helped me fine tune my database. Tons of tips and tricks are also here in the forum as you may already have found out.

Good luck!