Lean in the Kitchen

As a devoted practitioner of Lean, and more recently a Lean devoted practitioner of Lean I am constantly looking at the world around me for signs of Value and Waste.  And if there was ever any doubt as to the extent of my obsession it was never more apparent than the other day while helping my wife prepare lunch in the kitchen.

Leaving the culinary talent and creativity to my wife I am content to follow orders and carry out simple tasks.  On this particular occasion my wife asked me to “ball a couple of watermelons.”  For those of you, like me, who wouldn’t ordinarily know what this means allow me to describe the Watermelon Balling Value Map:

1. Using a large kitchen knife cut the watermelon in half
2. Using a balling tool scoop out individual melon balls and 'tap' them into a suitable container
3. When the container is full seal it properly
4. Store the container in the refrigerator

There are a few more subtleties than that but you get the general idea, both of how simple the task is, and my general level of aptitude in the kitchen.

Happy with my task I set out to 5s my workspace.  Again for those of you not familiar with watermelon balling I will give you a list of tools and materials that you will need:

• ·         Watermelon(s)
• ·         Large kitchen knife – preferably sharp
• ·         Cutting board – the one used for fruit, not the one used for cutting meat
• ·         Balling tool
• ·         Container for the melon balls with lid

It was at this point that I made my first mistake.  Eager to get going I quickly cut the first melon in half and then, without thinking, I reached for the second and cut it in half also.  Why not, I thought.  I already have the large knife in my hand.  This will save time.

As I type I can feel with shame the ‘tsk tsk’ looks coming from the Lean practitioners reading this.  For the rest of you allow me to explain my classic ‘batch and queue’ mistake.  Instead of allowing my product (melon balls) to flow through my Value Chain, I had incorrectly made the decision to run all my WIP (work in process) through Step 1 before moving on to Step 2.

“So what” I hear some of you thinking.  “It’s a kitchen not a factory.  And besides as you pointed out you saved the non-value added steps of setting down the knife and then picking it up a second time.

So picture the scene if you will.  I had a cutting board that was approximately 30cm x 50cm.  And the rule in this and most kitchens is all material must be cut on a cutting board.  As soon as I cut both water melons I now had four rather large half water melons that were dripping juice and had to therefore sit on my cutting board.  This meant there was little or no room left for me to maneuver the melons around in order to use the balling tool to scoop the melon balls and tap them into my container.  Not to mention that I had immediately introduced unnecessary waste associated with trying to keep all the melon juice on the cutting board while ensuring that the wobbly melon halves did not roll off the counter thus introducing considerable quality risk as well.

As bad as it was, it was about to get worse.

As soon as I started balling melons, as evidenced by the ‘tapping’ sound of the balling tool on the side of the glass container, my wife came by to do a schedule check on me.  And it was lucky she did.  Again I hear some of you in the crowd thinking to yourselves “...why is she micro-managing him?  He’s been trained.  He’s a good employee.  If he has a problem he will come and get her.”  Those would be the husbands, not the wives who know better.

Peering over my shoulder my wife exclaimed “what’s wrong with the water melon?!?”

Quickly going through the entire water melon balling process on which I had been trained I tried to see what she was seeing.  The balls were more or less round.  All of them were in the container.  And I had not dripped any melon juice on the counter.  So far so good I thought.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The melon is orange on the inside” she explained.

I looked closer and had to agree the inside of the melon had a decidedly orange tinge.  But since I had not been trained on quality inspection I had no idea just how much orange was acceptable.  Apparently this was too much.

My wife conducted a few more quality tests including gingerly tasting one of the melon balls I had produced.  After making a face and quickly spitting it out into the sink the decision was final; QA was shutting down the line.

So what are the lessons here?  First of all I talked about how product (melon balls) should have flowed through my process rather than filling up my work area with bulky WIP.  But more important than this, had I produced just one melon ball at a time for my customer I would have prevented all the waste associated with an entire bad production run.  Doing it my way I could have potentially balled up both melons, carefully stored them in the container and then placed them in the fridge.  In this scenario the quality issue would not have been discovered until sometime later when my customer went to serve them to her family.  By that time the root cause of the quality issue would have been virtually impossible to identify.  Were the melons in the fridge for too long?  Or was there a problem with the supplier (grocery store)?

Fortunately as I mentioned before my wife is an expert Active Manager when it comes to her kitchen.  Not only did she ensure that I clearly understood my process.  But she was intuitive enough to conduct a timely schedule check on me as soon as she heard the signal that product was being produced.  By stopping the line after only a few melon balls had been produced she was able to re-apply her resource (me) to another job that would in fact result in food appearing on the table (Value).

 Anyone see any of the other types of waste created or prevented?