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Finnish catering and restaurant industry giant
Building a daily management model for the restaurant chain
Background:
The customer is a large Finnish catering and restaurant company that prepares and serves food at over 50 different locations nationwide. Lean development is desired to be part of daily operations, and to support this, a daily management model has started to be built.
Problem:
General transparency regarding the status, challenges, and support needs of the restaurants is weak. Managing a network of over 50 restaurants is challenging, and prioritizing a small support organization is difficult. The same problems affect several restaurants, and their escalation and handling multiply the burden on the support organization. Metrics vary between businesses and restaurants, making performance evaluation difficult.
Goal:
A daily management model across the entire network, where daily management is not limited to just the restaurant operation but includes support functions and management as part of the daily management work. Clear metrics and an escalation model for problems, as well as general transparency, allow for rapid centralized responses to major issues.
Implementation:
In addition to physical daily management at the restaurant level and on whiteboards, a digital model was implemented, where different businesses review their restaurants' situations in daily management groups. Support functions lead their own activities using their daily management practices. The result is a combination of digital and on-site physical daily management at multiple levels.
The model was piloted in five pilot sites, and based on the observations, it was rolled out to all approximately 50 locations.
Result:
The quality of communication and the speed of response to issues improved significantly. General transparency improved markedly, and management's participation in daily work became clearer. The flow of information between locations and support organizations improved. For example, a long-standing problem with the washing machine line was solved in a week.
The results of the employee satisfaction survey in the pilot units were about 15 percentage points higher than in others. This was also one clear reason to continue the implementation in all locations.
