Have you heard about Lean? Six Sigma? Maybe, Toyota's way of doing things? It is a Methodology that focuses on applying a scientific approach to solving difficult problems such as: poor quality, low or variable output, and downtime. We know you might be still wondering what an industrial business model such as Toyotas’ or Motorola’s or GE’s have to do with a Restaurant or any Horeca business?
First, every company to succeed has to be customer-centric. It means to place the needs of its customers and their experiences in the center of all of its objectives and actions. Every single decision made has to answer the question “How does it help to satisfy my customer’s needs? ...to solve their problems? … to ease their pains”?
We all know that a nice environment and good waiters are never going to be enough if you serve a poor quality meal or if your waiting time is over the limit according to your customers expectations, right? So, this is why it is so important to consider Lean Thinking methodologies, because believe it or not, we have a lot in common! A lot!
Lean Six Sigma definition by Will Archer, Compeat’s Chief Technology Office, is the following:
“... it is a practice that streamlines business processes, eliminates defects, and reduces waste; ultimately improving customer satisfaction by creating a consistent product that you can get into the customers’ hands quickly”.
Perhaps, you apply some concepts yourself in your business, but you are not aware of it. So, you do not do it systematically, at least, not yet!
“The core idea is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources”. (Lean Enterprise Institute). Isn’t it what we are all looking for?
Restaurants and Cafes are hybrid businesses; they combine manufacture and service. Christopher Muller explains it very well in his article of the Boston Hospitality Review “Uniquely positioned as both consumer service providers and tangible finished goods manufactures, restaurants sell at retail an inventory that is fabricated from raw materials at the site of consumption”.
Therefore, management has to deal with both. Otherwise there will always be something missing.
Once applying a Lean approach to your business, the end result will be better value for your customers, reduced waste, increased productivity, an advantage over your competition, and, ultimately, larger profits. So, which are Lean Principles and How to implement them? These are the subjects we will be discussing.
Lean Principles
It is important to keep in mind that Lean management is not an exact formula but an approach, a way of thinking and doing things to continuously improve. Therefore, there might be as many solutions as different businesses out there and is not a project with a due date, but a continuous process. However, there are some “basics” or “principles” to follow and if you do, there will be no mistake!
Identify & Define Value.
This means that the first thing to do is to know what the needs and desires of your customers are from their point of view, both explicit (stated) and implicit (unsaid).
If we are -as we said before- customer centered oriented, then, we have to understand what constitutes or creates value for our customers; what is important for them.
Value is defined in the context of the products and/or services that you provide for your customers:
What do your customers truly want?
What are they willing to pay for?
What do they perceive as valuable?
Has it changed with Covid-19? Have their expectations of food and service changed? They certainly might have!
Asking yourself these questions, might lead you to reviewing:
The menu: making an audit of your menu you will probably realize that you’ll have to make some changes, either to simplify your production lines, or for some products that can be prepared with locally sourced produce, or low labor, or just for something that can be delivered or which sales are better.
Communication strategy: probably you will have to make more emphasis on hygiene rules and protocols followed -using perhaps non verbal communication- so your customers know that this is a priority for you and that you understand it may be an issue for them, so you care! This will make them feel much more comfortable and safe eating at your restaurant or ordering takeout or delivery.
Sales channels: whether you liked it or not. Perhaps you are short of personnel for dining in experiences at every time of the day or simply your business concept is focused in specific times. Delivery and take out became “the” alternatives for many to survive. It is important to explore new options, with an open mind especially in difficult times. Adjust marketing accordingly.
Map Value Stream:
Once you understand what is valuable for your customers, you have to focus on key processes to continuously increase it.
“To accomplish this, lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers”.
You have to distinguish steps and activities in the key processes that provide value for each product family, from those that create “waste” or that do not create value -remember always to consider your customer’s standing point of view-
The whole organization -the Kitchen, the front of the house, the administration- are part of the same Team; they have to work together and share the Purpose, the common Goal! So, when drawing the processes of the kitchen, they do not begin with cooking but with supply, and they do not end when the waiter receives the order, but when the customer is served or delivered his food -which is the goal of the kitchen, right? The thing is that one area is connected to the other; it depends on the result of the work and effort of the other. So, everybody has to do his best to create value for customers.
Create a Smooth Flow
Make the value-creating steps occur in tight sequence. The more detailed the drawing of steps and activities of the processes, the more accurately you will be finding the opportunities to improve and designing the “will be” processes. You have to streamline the processes to be free of bottlenecks and delays.
In order to do so, you have to ask yourself, keeping in mind that the objective is always to create or reinforce value for customers- at every step and activity, the following:
Does this step, and its activities…
...bring value to the customer?
...move my product /service towards the customer as he/she expects?
...flow smoothly, with no obstacles?
Eliminating “waste” along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less resources and costs (less human effort, less space and capital, less time to make products and services, etc) and with much fewer defects, compared with “traditional” business systems. The result of this step should be a roadmap to follow and get to the desired new stage.
To “clean” your processes and eliminate activities, ask in every step:
Is the customer willing to pay for this? → If the answer is Yes, No action is required.
Does this activity create “necessary waste”? It means that the activity does not add value itself but is still necessary to make your product or service valuable. → Strive to minimize this activity as much as possible.
Does this activity create “Unnecessary waste”? → this activity does not add value at all → Eliminate this activity.
Some things that might help you are:
Reduce Changeover Times: making it faster to switch between products so you can be more responsive to your customers. For example, keep your warmers with products available, according to the records in your Cooking and Wasting Control Sheets.
Avoid Batch Operations: batching is the opposite of flow and inherently creates bottlenecks, queues and inventory. Instead of investing valuable time, Can you have some products made according to your needs so they are ready to be used by your team when required? For example: does it make sense rolling napkins on plastic cutlery for delivery orders? Almost every cook knows how to make bread, but very few restaurants make their own. Why? It creates batch work! Instead, they buy pre baked bread, or ready to proof and bake dough, right? Pasta, empanadas, puff pastries, there are so many examples!
Organize Equipment and stations: to match the natural flow of the value stream so flow is inherent in your process. For example, everybody needs his/her tools ready to use and at hand; time must not be wasted looking for the proper utensils to use or bumping one another. This is important in the kitchen and in the hall as well; customers and waiters need space to walk around -and keep social distance- and waiters must also have a good visual of customers to be able to catch any customer’s need.
Pull Based on Customer Demand
The objective is to align the manufacturing processes to customer demand and adjust quickly to changes in that demand. If you have smooth flows, then products can be pulled through the process based on customer demand.
“Pulling production through the value stream makes it much easier to reduce finished product inventory. This is important because large finished product inventories and large amounts of WIP (work-in-process) are reservoirs of waste”. The key issue here is to differentiate between inventory that is necessary waste (the one that depends on external suppliers) and inventory that is Unnecessary waste because it is created in your business and depends on your decision making, management and processes, to reduce it or eliminate it.
Having suppliers that are true reliable partners, become more relevant than ever before!
Pursuit for Perfection
Perfection might sound exaggerated for some people, or too expensive for others. The objective stated in this principle is to promote an internal culture of continuous improvement and excellence. Excellent or outstanding performance and results must be rewarded. The idea is to repeat the whole cycle over and over, to keep continuously improving and do things better.
Lean approach to solving problems applies in every business and every process. It is not a tactic or a cost reduction program, even though this is one of its benefits indeed, when Lean principles are properly applied. It’s a way of thinking and acting in which every single person in the entire organization no matter his level or position -whether it is big or small business- has something to contribute with.
This new approach to managing and solving problems will definitely give you significant competitive advantages that won’t be easily copied because your competitors won’t be working in your business, with your team, doing things in your own way!
Sources: