KDS Production Item Count Lag

[JoeD]

I just switched our restaurant to KDS screens in our quick service restaurant and was so excited about production item counts and how they could create massive efficiencies for our kitchen. Unfortunately we cannot rely on production item counts to update or be correct on a regular basis. Our workflow is all tickets come in from the register HELD by utilizing course pacing. All orders are then selected by the Expediter KDS  and fired at once (busy times this can mean 10 tickets being fired while 10 tickets are held). We have the setting for only counting fired tickets vs fired and held tickets.

It seems to be a batching issue or a hardware issue where the information on production item counts does not update in a timely manner or updates incorrectly. With an unlimited time frame I think the production items. I find that the most laggy production item counts are the ones which are attributed to the most items. For example, a beef patty is associated with every burger on our menu, 2 beef patties for doubles, 3 for tripples etc. This count is almost always wrong during a busy rush. 

I think our networking is pretty solid... all hardware besides handhelds are hard wired on ethernet with fixed IPs. But open to questions/solutions regarding this aspect of things

I've tried placing all KDS terminals in grid view and limiting the amount of closed orders stored to the minimum. I've also shrunk the time for showing tickets on the "recently fulfilled" option to 20 minutes which I think is our safest bare minimum time to restore tickets that have been mistakenly fulfilled.

There have been some errors due to configuration but I am familiar enough with our setup to identify these issues and resolve them (i.e. item overides the prep station or doesnt have all appropriate production item counts). These errors are easy to identify because they always occur when the same. In other cases, I am sure the direct configuration is not the issue but a lag of some sort. The count EVENTUALLY reaches the correct state but when its 3-15 minutes later this is too late to be of any use.

We are still seeing many errors on an hourly basis which is pushing us towards abandoning the feature all together. What good is a count you cant trust? 

Has anyone experienced this issue? Any potential solutions? 

Thanks,
Joe

[rcmck]

I have not noticed any issues with production counts personally, but I do not hold at the expeditor like you, I could test that and see if I can replicate the issue. What would you say the fired ticket count is when you seem to start having issues? How many prep KDS do you use? 

[JoeD]

We're doing about 7-10 tickets at once with 3 prep stations and two expo screens. Tonight we took production item counts off of every kds but one and still had wrong counts/ lag.  We're also using a variety of settings to create a workflow where tickets print on fire rather than on send. We notice tickets print out of order when fired compare to when the order was sent. 

[rcmck]

OK, pretty similar setup, only one expo though, I will see if I can test this tomorrow, though I don't really see how networking could be an issue. I don't know exactly how the production counts work behind the scenes, but I believe they are calculated live on the KDS itself. I would suspect the most obvious thing first which would be a mistake somewhere in the configuration causing the calculation to be off. Have you double checked all your menu items and the counts assigned? You said you offer single double and triple burgers, how is that setup in the menu? Is it a modifier selection on the burgers? 

[rcmck]

I tested with the same expo firing configuration like yours and was not able to get a lag, sent several orders with all the same item as fast as I could. I'm confident it is not related to any network issues, there is no evidence that production counts are even part of the order when it is sent, and no references to it in the API.

My theory is they are just part of a configuration/database that is stored locally on the device and  then calculated on the device. I would double check that something doesn't have  a wrong number somewhere, andalso try clearing cache and resyncing all data on all of your kds devices to make sure they have good data, a reboot wouldn't hurt either.