By Kevin Meyer
Each month in the Superfactory Newsletter I list some interesting lean-oriented news stories. The newsletter that went out a couple days ago had a wide variety... from all the different things we could learn from the Toyota fiasco to companies in high labor cost industries that are succeeding in North America instead of chasing cheap labor, to an article on "designing an efficient kitchen." Guess which one was read the most. The article on the kitchen. Really.
Now I don't know if the subscriber base has a disproportionate number of chef-wannabees, or if the process and value creation aspects of cooking resonate with us manufacturing geeks, but I will agree it was an exceptional article from an unusual source. The author had a very good grasp of lean concepts and leveraged it to show how food service can be improved.
This is a lengthy article, but I wanted to share some parts of it with you.
Realizing that foodservice operations are similar to manufacturing facilities, many designers apply IE principles, also know as lean manufacturing, when developing or remodeling kitchens.
Henry Ford was among the first in the U.S. to integrate IE principles into his auto manufacturing plants with the assembly line. Toyota saw success with its own lean system that identifies the top seven elements of waste: transportation, inventory, motion, waiting for the production step, overproduction, overprocessing and defects.
Food Service & Equipment Magazine channels Ford and Toyota. Go figure. But it really does make sense. First let's map the value stream.
Foodservice designers quantify the dynamics of an operation through process-mapping production bottlenecks, says Martinez, who accomplishes this by creating a flow chart of the kitchen's activity. Martinez looks for excessive parallel activities, such as servers dropping dirty dishes close to other servers picking up fresh food, and then suggests ways to prevent bottlenecks. This focus on each staff member's movements, behaviors and capabilities is what he calls crew-centric design.
Ligocki agrees. “You want to take each process and break it down,” he says. “For example, in a fast-food or casual-dining burger restaurant where you have 10 employees, you want to make sure there's a value stream that flows from the cook making the fries to the server serving the food to the customer enjoying the food. The fry person has to create value for the burger person who then creates value for the waitstaff who takes the food to the table.”
Even lean work cell design.
While the linear cooklines found in most commercial kitchens are representative of Ford's assembly line, a partially linear setup or U-shape design may better suit his principles, Ligocki says.
“I think a big mistake that people make is just assuming kitchens should be laid out in a straight line,” Ligocki says. “Many forget about U-shape designs, something you see in office settings where cubicle desks are rounded, not straight across.”
U-shape kitchens or workstations work best in multi-station operations such as university food courts or similar scatter systems where one cook preps, prepares and serves the food. In such a setup, everything should be within reach.
And the impact of small kaizens.
On one project, Ligocki installed stainless-steel corners near the receiving door so the operator wouldn't have to repeatedly repair a wall. Seemingly irrelevant facts such as which way the door opens can have a big impact on productivity and safety. “Sounds minute, but in Wisconsin we get a lot of strong southwest winds,” Ligocki says. “You wouldn't want them blowing in and causing the door to smack someone as they drop off a delivery.”
Reducing batch size.
One key step in reducing food waste is inventory control. In the past, kitchens sought to produce a large amount of food at one time in preparation for a rush of customers. Large-batch processing isn't appropriate for all operations.
Ligocki points to a pizza buffet restaurant he helped redesign as a good example of how large-batch processing can lead to waste and a poor-quality product. Ligocki helped the restaurant track its most-discarded product and what types of pizza the operation's customers preferred. Popular pizzas were then prepared on larger pans, while smaller pans were reserved for slower-moving varieties.
And pull versus push production.
In many instances, Ligocki subscribes to a push and pull scenario, where the cook doesn't prepare anything until the order is in, and the waiting customer is kept happy with good service and/or self-serve options. An example of this is a bakery-café, where customers place their orders with cashiers and have the option to fill drinks and grab condiments while waiting for their food. This setup distinguishes made-to-order, quick-casual restaurants from traditional fast-food outlets, where customers get their premade food immediately after ordering, an example of batch cooking.
The author goes on to describe five steps to create a lean kitchen, key lean terminology, the impact of ergonomics on lean, and a case study of a tapas bar that leveraged lean to be successful with small portions.
Since so many of us can relate to the cooking process or have had to stand in line at McDonald's, this well-written article could be a great training tool. Check it out.