[HN Gopher] Explanation of the Domino's Pizza Tracker
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Explanation of the Domino's Pizza Tracker
Author : danso
Score : 88 points
Date : 2023-02-28 12:55 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| itslennysfault wrote:
| You can also just look at the patent to see how it works...
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US10262281B1/en
| jstanley wrote:
| > But if someone is trying to game the system to make corporate
| believe they get everything done in record time, they can control
| the system to fake the times.
|
| I find this so incredibly annoying. KFC and McDonald's near me
| have screens up saying when your order is being "prepared" and
| when it is "ready to collect", except the "ready to collect"
| column is totally useless because they always put it in "ready to
| collect" long before it is actually ready to collect.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| I think this is a side effect of "what is measured is managed",
| combined with people always trying to game systems. If you
| establish a system to measure how fast people make meals you're
| just going to get false estimates. The solution I've seen is to
| trust and then actually manage people if they aren't doing
| well.
| tough wrote:
| CANT REALLY GAME AN AI/ML SECURITY FOOTAGE CCTV HOOKED SYSTEM
| [deleted]
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I thought it was GPS
| astura wrote:
| The Domino pizza tracker states are "preparing", "baking,"
| "quality check," and "out for delivery" or "ready for pickup."
| You can't track your delivery driver.
| naikrovek wrote:
| oh yes you can. I watched my delivery driver make the journey
| via map on the order tracker just two weeks ago.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| That's just the last part when the pizza is out for delivery.
| The steps before that all happen in the store.
| tonetheman wrote:
| The part about the ovens all running at the same time is funny to
| me.
|
| 10 years from now when some new type of tech is discovered that
| will let pizza cook faster some lonely programmer somewhere will
| have to find all the places it was hard coded.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > some new type of tech is discovered that will let pizza cook
| faster
|
| Pizza is actually cooked hot and fast compared to most other
| dishes already. I want the back of the oven to be 500C / 930F
| before I start. This is why a pizza oven is specialised
| equipment, a standard-issue kitchen oven doesn't get that hot
| (usually tops out under 300C), so doesn't give nearly as good
| results.
|
| And why it takes about 90-120 seconds per pizza to cook in a
| proper pizza oven.
|
| Though IDK, maybe Dominos process is different to this, for
| their different pizza style.
|
| If you wanted to cook even faster, then less toppings would
| help, but you may not want that, though you might get a good
| result in 60 seconds.
|
| And an even hotter might not work- I suspect that it would not
| give as good results, e.g. burned in one area and undercooked
| in another.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > And an even hotter might not work
|
| Indeed. >1000F is into meme-like territory regarding cook
| speed vs temperature tradeoff. If you had an extremely
| consistent process & everything was tuned you could maybe
| pull it off, but the stability of the system would be really
| bad.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The pizza ovens at this scale are massive industrial conveyer
| belts: the bake time is the time it takes the conveyer to move
| from the start of the oven to the end of the oven. The length
| of the conveyer belt is influenced by the number of pizzas (and
| other baked goods such as pastas, wings, and baked desserts)
| they want to be able to bake in somewhat parallel (obviously it
| is something more like a queue, but there's a major overlap in
| baking times of consequent items). The speed of the conveyer
| belt is influenced by operator safety concerns and also
| avoiding the "Lucy and Ethel backup problem" (from the famous
| episode of I Love Lucy about the conveyer belt at the chocolate
| factory).
|
| In many ways, at this industrial scale of oven the pizza
| recipes (and pasta recipes and wing types and baked desserts
| and everything else sent through the oven) are calibrated
| specifically to the bake times of the chosen oven conveyer belt
| length and speed rather than the other way around.
|
| (Which isn't to suggest that such ovens don't get redesigned
| from time to time, but that's likely a large enough project
| that Tracker programmer has plenty of lead time.)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The conveyer pizza ovens I've seen had configurable speeds
| and temps on them, though nobody ever touched them. I always
| assumed it was for different altitudes. So the tracker
| program likely already expects configurable times.
| toast0 wrote:
| I've seen similar controls on conveyor toasters, and seen
| conveyor pizza ovens in operation. If you really wanted to
| adjust the temperature/speed for a particular item, you'd
| need to leave a gap before and after that item (or group of
| that items, I guess), and that would ruin your throughput.
| You really want everything to cook at the same temperature
| and the same speed. Or you need multiple pipelines, one for
| each temperature and speed.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Adjusting for a particular item is nearly impossible, but
| an oven somewhere like Denver might have a different
| configured speed and temperature than an oven in Texas.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've seen a pizza place where they had two different
| speed ovens, one was for the simple pizzas and the other
| was for more complicated/thicker ones.
| wronglebowski wrote:
| I think people fail to recognize how much of everything now is an
| internet connected computer. This was true at McDonald's 15 years
| ago. A bunch of Windows XP embedded machines at various
| stations(Fries, Salads, Sandwiches, Desserts) getting routed
| their individual components.
|
| In more recent years it's gone WAY WAY past that level of
| complexity. Dual lane drive thrus? They have cameras and track
| which car is which to try and keep orders straight. All of this
| data feeds into a system so management has a clearer and clearer
| idea of what's actually happening in the stores.
|
| In a smaller operation like a Dominos it's super easy to cheat
| and bump everything off, but once you have any real volume it
| becomes unmanageable.
| nateb2022 wrote:
| > In a smaller operation like a Dominos it's super easy to
| cheat and bump everything off, but once you have any real
| volume it becomes unmanageable.
|
| Not really. During dinner rushes, a store averaging ~100
| pizzas/hr (+ sides) can't bump an order off if they didn't
| prepare it yet. You simply can't remember all of that
| information, and once you mark it as complete you have to pull
| it off the order history or refer to receipts. Trying to do
| that would be insanely hard.
|
| Most often, stores will bump things off as they're prepared.
| With good employees on line, things will be prepared much
| quicker than they go through the oven. Continuing to bump them
| off although they aren't put in the oven yet, that can
| contribute to inaccurate times since the system assumes that
| the moment it's bumped it's put in the oven.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm actually honestly surprised how FEW errors McDonalds has
| with those dual order drive throughs feeding into a single
| line.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| In my experience, it's extremely common for the operator to
| select the wrong lane when they're talking to me over the
| speaker, because I can see my order pop up on the other
| speaker while my screen stays blank. It seems that the
| speaker system is totally independent of the screens,
| probably for redundancy so that they can still take orders if
| the screens malfunction.
| heywire wrote:
| Check out the stories that have been shared here about Chick-
| fil-a too.
| post_break wrote:
| Funny to see Snubs on here. Shout out to Hak5, been following
| them since the beginning, even visited the hack house back in
| like 2008 I think.
| redlenin_cheese wrote:
| https://mrshll.uk/2021/10/12/thick-description-pizzas/
|
| More in-depth presentation of the same subject matter.
| kraquepype wrote:
| Thank you, I was just wondering a few days ago how it worked - if
| it was all an approximation, manual inputs, or some level of
| automation.
|
| Time for an anecdote; Years ago, when the pizza tracker was new,
| I worked on a team that deployed/managed bare metal and physical
| Linux hosts. Someone higher up got excited about it and then we
| had to have discussions about having a "pizza tracker" for our
| server deploy process. Fun times...
| thunderbong wrote:
| Better readability -
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1630220894919598080.html
| tomcam wrote:
| Seems unlikely that each step is actually updated by the workers
| themselves. I'd put money on an algorithm. The button or tablet
| they'd have to use would to signify completion would just get
| loaded with schmutz. Plus they'd be likely to forget to update
| during peak hours. A foot pedal might work.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| > Seems unlikely that each step is actually updated by the
| workers themselves. I'd put money on an algorithm. The button
| or tablet they'd have to use would to signify completion would
| just get loaded with schmutz. Plus they'd be likely to forget
| to update during peak hours. A foot pedal might work.
|
| Obviously Twitter is not the best for long form, but did you
| scroll through the replies from the first tweet that she added?
| She literally explains how it works, the options workers have,
| etc. No need to speculate haha
| tomcam wrote:
| I did now and you're right. Thanks.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You don't think people in kitchens can use buttons, because
| they would get dirty?
| tomcam wrote:
| What? You're hallucinating. I said no such thing.
| slackdog wrote:
| [dead]
| nateb2022 wrote:
| Keyboards are frequently used at most Domino's locations. The
| entire keyboard is covered in a disposable plastic wrap that is
| changed as needed. Unless you have a lot of sauce on your
| fingers, your hands are typically pretty clean and the
| buttons/keyboards don't get very dirty.
| [deleted]
| amflare wrote:
| I worked in fast food during school and there are absolutely
| physical buttons[0]. They are tiny little pill buttons under a
| plastic label. They don't get as dirty as you think, mostly
| because the sanitary requirements in food prep mean that things
| are never allowed to ever truly get dirty.
|
| [0]: https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/cb125v2-kds-handle-
| min.jpg
| lovich wrote:
| > mostly because the sanitary requirements in food prep mean
| that things are never allowed to ever truly get dirty.
|
| Having worked at multiple restaurants and a Domino's in
| particular all I can say is lol
| tomcam wrote:
| Love hearing about this. Thanks for the correction.
| mcculley wrote:
| I have traveled quite a bit and found that even within the
| U.S., food safety regulations are very variable. Some
| counties and states take food safety very seriously. Some
| do not.
| tomcam wrote:
| OF COURSE I'VE SEEN THESE! D'oh! Thank you.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Dominos kitchens are viewable from the lobby, just go look at
| it on google images.
|
| You don't forget it because the same screen is your personal
| work tracker that contains the order you are making right now.
| You need to mark it as complete in order to see your next task.
| tomcam wrote:
| TIL,thanks.
| tomcam wrote:
| UPDATE: Pretty neat. These buttons exist, they're used, and I
| now realize I've seen them myself. Extensive downvotes not
| surprising to me but it was very cool learning about it.
| Learned a bunch of things that have been at the back of my mind
| for years.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| The most surprising part is that the order is communicated to the
| store over telephone. Surely that can't be the case?
| fknorangesite wrote:
| This afternoon I overheard a university student refer to a
| period of time in which I was already an adult as "in the
| 1900s", so now thanks to this comment I'm really 0-2 here
| today.
|
| Anyway brb putting my other foot in the grave, I guess.
| selectodude wrote:
| That's only if people call and somebody inputs the order
| manually. If it's done online, it just automatically shows up
| on the prep line screen.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Do people who call also get access (SMS link?) to the
| tracker? If so then I see where I was mistaken.
| nateb2022 wrote:
| Different demographics contribute to different phone orders.
| Most college towns, for instance, have a lower than average
| phone order rate.
|
| Most busy stores can't answer every call during a rush, and so
| some calls go unanswered. During some very very busy rushes,
| online ordering is disabled in order to prevent people from
| placing orders that can't be fulfilled in a reasonable amount
| of time.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Sometimes it's simply easier to pick up the phone and say, "Two
| large pepperonis and a box of breadsticks to 123 Avenue Lane
| please" and pay the delivery driver, rather than stumble
| through the online order flow. The main reason to order online
| is that there are always deals.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| I was referring to the line "When the phone CS puts in the
| order, it goes to the prep line, then bake."
|
| What I understood is, when you place an order on the Domino's
| website, someone in a call-center phones the branch and reads
| off the online order. It isn't directly sent to a computer at
| the store.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| That line is saying what happens when the person in the
| store answering calls puts an order into the system. Online
| orders automatically go to stores.
|
| Most people use the tracker after an online order, but I
| believe you can call in then go to the tracker and input
| your number. See https://www.dominos.com/en/pages/tracker/
| bombcar wrote:
| According to a quick search, 75% of orders are online now,
| which means 25% are still phone or walk-in.
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(page generated 2023-02-28 23:02 UTC)