Going to the Gemba, Gordon Ramsay style.

I was thinking about starting a blog, because I’m new to studying lean (as a student in Automotive Engineering), I felt the need of having a place to put principles and tools into context and receive feedback on my interpretation.

For my first post I have picked the TV-show “Kitchen Nightmares” with Gordon Ramsay. For those who don’t know about the show: British top-chef Gordon Ramsay goes out to help other restaurants in distress. Usually this comes with struggle after which Gordon loses his patience (resulting in bad language).  Before I learned of the Toyota Production System, I found Ramsay’s way of diagnosing restaurants refreshing and very effective. Even after learning of “going to the gemba” I never thought of it that way until yesterday. Yesterday I asked Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals and owner of LeanBlog.org (Twitter: @Leanblog) about Gordon Ramsay and his way of “going to the Gemba”. We both agreed that it’s going to the gemba.

At the beginning of each case/show, he first sits at a table in the restaurant and orders different items from the menu. With this as a starting point he experiences what it’s like to be the customer. With this single act of sitting down and ordering he researches the four basic elements of customer fulfilment (as presented in Creating Lean Dealers): Quality&Delivery, Convenience, Service and Price. With this one action he can answer the following questions:

• How does the wait staff perform?
• What’s the menu size?
• What are they charging?
• What is the waiting time for drinks and food?
• How is the presentation food?
• Is the food warm?
• And most important of all how does the food taste?

With this single action he can establish the relation between all four elements of customer fulfilment: Was the dining experience worth the money? In all shows the answer would be: No, otherwise the restaurants wouldn’t be in distress right?

After his dining experience he usually starts with an observation of the evening service. He starts with just watching and studying processes in the restaurant. In most cases the seven wastes (Muda) are becoming visible. In this context you can really speak of the seven deadly sins. The wastes regularly passing the show are:

• Overproduction: Preparing food for the same table two or more times
• Overprocessing: Overcomplicated garnish and presentation
• Waiting: Customers who are waiting for their food and the chef who’s waiting for the waiter to serve the food.
• Inventory: Too much food prepared for the service
• Defects: Sending out cold or overcooked food.
• Motion: Some waiters and waitress have to climb stairs just to delivery the food!
• Transport: Transporting prepared ingredients to coolers just to go get again them when you need them or transporting the ordering ticket from the restaurant to the kitchen which is on another floor.
• Other things he learns with observation are overburden (Muri) and unevenness (Mura). These problems show as; to much tickets going to the kitchen which results in to much stress and work pressure in the kitchen and on the wait staff. This results in late and bad food, which effects the work pressure again in a very, very bad way.
You might think that Gordon would have lost his courage and motivation after the disasters at diner and lunch, but then he goes out to inspect the place. You really don’t want to know what he finds sometimes (you probably don’t want to eat in a restaurant again). The list of different wastes grows even more, I think Ohno would burst into tears, because some are so easy to solve/prevent. Here are four of the seven wastes again:
• Overproduction: Preparing to much food in preparation
• Overprocessing: Food from all over the world and no local products, in one case there was inventory a restaurant with three Michelin-stars would be jealous at (Expensive and to luxury).
• Inventory: Just to much of it, usually this mean: rotten food.
• Defects: I think the biggest defect they are showing is: hygiene. Why are we letting the basics slip?

After the experience, observation and inspection Gordon knows where to start. Usually with some  cleaning, scrubbing and throwing away junk. Then they start with setting new standards and giving instructions on everybody’s role in the “new” restaurant. They change the food to meet customer expectations and use fresh, local products. This shows me that the simple principle of “Going to the gemba” has to be just that simple and effective.

Where there are no standards, there can be no consistency. -Gordon Ramsay

Welcome!

Welcome to my first (well actually it’s my second) post. This is my blog and little space to write about everything I wise.  Mostly I want to write about Lean manufacturing and my progress in my study. I felt the need two things. First of all this will be the place where I can write down new insights. The other reason why I started this blog, is for me to have a place to practice my writing skills and English.  I want to blog in English because I want to share my experiences with the world.

But first I want to introduce myself. My name is Niels, I’m born in Geldrop, the Netherlands which is a sort of suburb of Eindhoven (the home town of electronics giant Philips). My interests lie with ice hockey, music and animal welfare. In 2002 I began training to be a mechanic at a dealership in Eindhoven. After completing the program in 2008, I began a study in Automotive Engineering at the HAN university of Applied Science.

At the HAN there is a course “Quality Management”. It was this course who changed my interests at the HAN. The course introduced me  to Lean Manufacturing. Because it was presented as a set of tools, I got the wrong impression. But this impression didn’t stop me from studying lean on the web and with books. Now I’m almost graduating at the HAN and still lean has my interest and I still learn new thing everyday.

Where my lecturer told me about Poka Yoka, Kanban, Kaizen etc I know discover there’s a whole mind-set behind. This mind-set is what makes lean works, not the tools. Since I discovered Lean is a mind-set/philosophy, I look different to things in life and see practical uses of the lean philosophy in different places.

Maybe I will have to honour of being a student in a lean environment but until then I want to write down my experiences. Please feel welcome to give me feedback on my observations/thoughts and on my writing skills.

Best regards,

Niels