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Starbucks' "Lean Thinking" Department

Front Desk Operations

Josh started this discussion 15 years 8 months ago

Starbucks' Lean Techniques:
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/107468/latest-starbucks-buzzword-lean-japanese-techniques.html?mod=bb-budgeting

How to robotize your employees my minimizing unnecessary movements like leaning over:

Under a new initiative being put into practice at its more than 11,000 U.S. stores, there will be no more bending over to scoop coffee from below the counter, no more idle moments waiting for expired coffee to drain and no more dillydallying at the pastry case.

...At a different downtown Chicago store, baristas on a recent morning temporarily ran out of coffee around 7:45 a.m. Mr. Heydon observed two workers at the espresso machine and traced their movements on what's called a "spaghetti map," because of all the lines.

After a few minutes, his map showed a jumble of lines from the espresso machine to the sink, over to the ice chest and back. Shaking his head Mr. Heydon said, "We're on a never-ending quest to get to perfection."

Do you think it's worth aiming for high efficiency like this in large hostels or is the idea of turning employees into robots a little twisted?

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santa klaus

15 years

When I started at Wombats, I thought the reception was the worst design I ever saw. It was too big. I had to get up from my chair all the time. The place where I worked before had a reception designed like a cockpit. It was very small, but everything was easy to reach without having to get up - all the room keys, for example.
We also had the storage room with all the spare parts (light bulbs, shower heads, etc) on the top floor, which really sucked. I had to change at least one bathroom or reading light bulb every evening. When you are busy anyway, the commute to the top floor sucked. Toilet paper and cleaning stuff was stored on 3rd floor - also not very practical when people ask for another roll of toilet paper all the time.

I am basically a very lazy person. I like to do things efficiently, so I have more time to be lazy (or to post messages on Hostelmanagement :))

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AndrewC

15 years

Taylorism is nothing new, and it's the foundation of many low-skilled, repetitive jobs in large organisations.

I think that what Klaus has to say about laying out the workspace efficiently is very important, we've modified our reception area here recently to reduce the amount of 'dancing' around each other we have to do.

I think for smaller hostels, as long as some common sense has been used in laying out the environment and assigning duties, any gains in productivity (through "Lean Thinking") are probably negligible. The increased rigidity would probably be negative if anything.

Larger hostels with hundreds of check-ins/outs might get a benefit.

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Josh Hostels

15 years

Larger hostels with hundreds of check-ins/outs might get a benefit.

I think it could definitely make a different at large hostels.

I remember lines out the doors for 8 hours at a time at a 200-bed hostel with two receptionists. It was an inefficient system where the front desk had to also run a 12-computer internet cafe that was open to the public :)

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santa klaus

15 years

I think it could definitely make a different at large hostels.

A good PMS makes the biggest difference. If you have software any fool can learn to handle in one afternoon and if the receptionists don´t waste most of their time trying to tell the computer what they want to do you can save heaps of time.

I think it´s extremely important to organize routine stuff in the most efficient way so you have more time to actually take care of your guests.

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