Monthly Archives: February 2014

Chipotle’s Operations Strategy for Faster Service

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FEBRUARY 10, 2014

chipotle-service

Lines snaking out the door at lunchtime have long been a bottleneck to growth at Chipotle, the burrito chain, writes Quartz.com  (Jan. 31, 2014).  But the fast-food firm managed to speed up service by 6 transactions per hour at peak times this past quarter by implementing what it calls the “four pillars of great throughput.” Here they are:

+“Expediters” That would be the extra person between the one who rolls your burrito and the one who rings up your order. Her job? Getting your drink, asking whether your order is for here or to go, and bagging your food.
+“Linebackers” The people who patrol the countertops, serving-ware, and bins of food, so the ones who are actually serving customers never turn their backs on them.
+“Mise en place” What in a regular restaurant means setting out ingredients and utensils ready for use means, in Chipotle’s case, zero tolerance for not having absolutely everything in place ahead of lunch and dinner rush hours.
+“Aces in their places” A commitment to having what each branch considers its top servers in the most important positions at peak times, so there are no trainees working at burrito rush hour.
Chipotle is also mulling incorporating a Starbucks-style mobile payment system (the chain already accepts online orders for pick-up), which the company is hopeful will help funnel customers in and out of its lines a bit faster. But the company is open to a number of other options, too, so long as they help speed up service.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Harley-Davidson’s Manufacturing Strategy

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FEBRUARY 5, 2014

harley2“Before the great recession, Harley-Davidson didn’t have to worry about counting the seconds,” writes The New York Times (Feb. 2, 2014). There was little competition for their core customers — “fat white guys,” as one employee called them. Harley charged a huge premium for its bikes, and its customers waited as long as 18 months to receive them. The union rep at Harley’s York plant said workers could assemble motorcycles at their own pace, music blaring. “We had 30% absenteeism every Monday and Friday,” added the plant manager. This all worked fine until the recession, when the company was close to collapse.

Many firms respond to global competition by breaking their unions, by moving to a right-to-work state (or out of the country), and by employing robots on the assembly line. But Harley has an “American blue-collar, working man” brand, and to get rid of its union or to make its motorcycles in Mexico would have been catastrophic. The company could only compete by redesigning the production system so that each worker created more value than they cost. So Harley tore down the existing plant and built a new one. Unlike most factories, the new plant has people everywhere. There are no robots on the main assembly line; instead, hundreds of workers, operating in teams of 5 or 6, manually build each motorcycle. There are around 1,200 different Harley configurations, and a new bike starts its way through the production line every 80 seconds. Virtually each one is unique.

Human beings can also solve thorny problems that lead to major inefficiencies. At Harley, there are 150 “problem solvers” whose entire job is to continuously monitor their small sections of the production line and search for better ways to make motorcycles. The average tenure of a line worker at the York plant is 18 years, and these workers are extremely devoted to the company. (“How many factory workers have the company logo tattooed on their arm?” asks the plant manager.) Costs have fallen by $100 million at the plant and quality has improved even more significantly. Customer demand is extremely high, especially now that people can get a bike within a few weeks.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

America’s Second Railroad Revolution

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FEBRUARY 4, 2014

Union Pacific's Bailey Yard

Rail is on a roll in the U.S. As Forbes(Feb.10, 2014) writes, “The relic of the 19th century will become the most important logistics system of the 21st century.” Thanks to leaps in technology, more and more freight traffic has moved from roads to rails, where trains can move one ton of goods about 500 miles on a single gallon of fuel. The industry, so recently an aging also-ran in the age of superhighways, has seen revenues surge 19% to $80.6 billion since 2009, creating 10,000 new jobs at railroad companies. Less than a decade ago diesel prices were so low that manufacturers rarely considered rail for shipments of less than 1,000 miles. Now they’re ditching trucks in favor of trains for jobs as short as 500 miles.

All of which is driving a multibillion-dollar revival in rail R&D and infrastructure, investment unseen in America since the transcontinental railroad. Thousands of new state-of-the-art locomotives–far more fuel-efficient and less polluting than the ones they replace–are now operating on U.S. railroads. And the boom (with $20 billion in infrastructure spending annually) has been underwritten by industry, with no cost to taxpayers. Further, the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 required railroads to fund, build and implement a new, safer “Positive Train Control” system by the end of 2015, refitting locomotives and tracks, and placing GPS devices on every locomotive.

This technology has been revolutionizing freight hauling, allowing the railroads to pinpoint a locomotive’s location within one yard. And instead of sending trains speeding across the country only to stop at each red signal, the new system means conductors will be able to know about planned stops well in advance, allowing them to simply reduce speed (and fuel consumption) to a level that won’t force them to stop altogether and burn major amounts of fuel when restarting from a standstill.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.