Lean Six Sigma yellow belt project on Reduction of leftover food in Kitchen Services of a residential college.

“FOOD IS GOD, DO NOT WASTE FOOD”

The purpose of this project is to empirically investigate the applicability and implementation of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) regarding food wastage in the Sri Sathya Sai Senior Boys Hostel. LSS is a service quality practice that has proved its success in the manufacturing and service sectors.

DEFINE

 

During the discussion with the kitchen department and the warden of the hostel, it was found that there is a huge concern regarding the food wastage in the hostel which is leading to a high deficit for the students, increasing year on year. This is a serious problem as most of the fees paid by the students are used for the food and a food deficit of Rs.3000-4000 every semester can be avoided and prove beneficial to the students.           

A team of post-graduate students came together with the objective of reducing the food wastage of the hostel and also identifying reasons as to why the students are skipping dining sessions using the LSS DMAIC methodology as part of the project. As the first step of the project, the voice of the customer (VOC) is converted into a CTQ metric. A CTQ tree is used for this purpose of decomposing the broad customer requirements into more easily quantified requirements.

 

·        CTQ-1: Volume of Solid food wastage by students per dining session.

·        CTQ-2: Volume of Liquid food wastage by students per dining session.

·        CTQ-3: Count of food wastage by students per dining session.

 

Milestones: -

·        15/8/2019 - Understood the kitchen problems & charted the framework of causes for   food leftover

·        31/8/2019 - Completion of data collection for food.

·        05/9/2019 - completion of customer data collection on the menu items for the month of August

·        14/9/2019 - validated the causes with Pareto analysis & calculated the Cp, Cpk & process sigma

·        19/9/2019 - Established the control limits & Brainstormed for the possible solutions.

·        25/9/2019 - submitted the interim report on the various stages of developments & successful implementation of few solutions over the last 2 months.

 

 

Goal: (Reduction of wastage)

 

Dining sessions that have been included in this study are:

·           Breakfast

·           Lunch

·           Dinner

 

 

Team Members	Project Mentors	Project Champion
Nagendra Thakur	Sanjay Mahalingam	Sri Venkatachalam
Akshay Kalal	Vijay Sundar	Sri Niranjan
Sai Ashutosh Misra
Srisreshtan
Uday Kiran Raju

 

MEASURE

In order to measure the volume of wastage the formula used was,

Volume of a frustum = (1/3) * π * h * (r₁² + r₂² + (r₁ * r₂))

H = height of the frustum of a cone

R1 = Top radius of the frustum

R2 = Bottom radius of the frustum

L = slant height of the vessel

 

An example of how the formula was used in shown below.

 

 

SIPOC

 The SIPOC model was used to identify the boundary of the project. It was used by the team to identify all relevant elements of the process improvement of the project before work began. It helped us define the project which was not well-scoped. This is useful as we are looking at even the making of the food.

DATA TYPES

For this project, we are using both discrete as well as continuous data. 

·         Discrete data – count data, for the count of solid, liquid food, and countable food items.

·        Continuous data – the percentage of food leftover (solid/ liquid)

 Cpk, Cp and Process σ

We are using both, Cpk and Cp methods to calculate the results of our findings. This is because we have both continuous (volume of solid and liquid waste) as well as discrete data (count of food wastage). Cpk method is used for the continuous data and the Cp method is used for the discrete data.

·        Cp = (USL – LSL/ 6 std dev of sample)

·        Cpk = Min [(x bar – LSL/3 std dev of sample), (USL – x bar/3 std dev of sample)]

·        Process sigma = 3 * Cpk

 

The sample of how we came to the final calculations of Cp, Cpk and process sigma is shown below.

 

 

                                        

PROCESS 𝛔 RESULTS    B  L  D  Solid  1.08  1.21    1.54       Liquid  1.66  1.16  Nan  Count  0.44  n.a.  0.42                                                                  AVERAGE WEIGHTAGE  (%)  B  L  D  Solid  11.5 5.61  7.05  Liquid  2.94  5.84  2.58  Count  2.52  n.a.  2.86

         

 

 

 

 

These are the items which have been identified as being above the USL, causing variation.

GEMBA

As part of the project, all the team members took turns to personally go and measure the amount of food that was leftover after every meal session. We measured it in terms of the volume of food left. Although kilograms/liters would have been a better measure, we couldn’t follow that method because the food was to be kept on the counter before the students arrived. The last hour before lunch ends at 11:45 am and the food would be placed on the counters exactly by that time. So we could not weigh the food.

 

Gauge R & R

The measurement done for the project stands the test of Reproducibility and Repeatability. This means that irrespective of the person measuring, the results are bound to be the same.

ANALYZE  

At this stage, we had a brainstorming session with the students as well as the kitchen staff who are the most important stakeholders for the project. The outcome of the session was the identification of various reasons as to why students do not attend/waste the food. These reasons were validated by a questionnaire sent to a representative sample of the students which included students from both the UG and the PG degrees. The students were asked to rate the causes on a Likert scale ranging from 0-10, w.r.t the frequency and the severity of the cause, with 0 being least frequent/severe and 10 being the most frequent/severe.   

After taking into account all the responses, we found out the RPN. We then made the Pareto chart which helped us identify the top 5 reasons for skipping food sessions.

 

The top 5 cause for wastage of food were:

1.     Project/Assignment

2.     Unlimited serving (few liked items get over)

3.     Curry is not so good.

4.     Menu was unknown

5.     Taste and preferences don’t match.

 

These causes influenced the wastage of food more than any of the other causes.

 

We conducted a survey to identify the satisfaction levels per food item. The questionnaire contained 99 food items across all the dining sessions. The questionnaire was sent to a sample representative of students from each floor (A, B, C) and also research scholars.

 

Using that data, we conducted a Single-factor Annova wherein,

 

·        Ho = There is no variation between the ratings given by the students from all three floors.

·        H1 = There is variation.

The conclusion from the Single Factor Annova was that the students of the A floor are far less satisfied than the B and C floor students. This was because, the P-value was lesser than α (0.05) for all the sessions (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner)

FISH-BOWL DIAGRAM

Our Annova did not give us uniform results, so in order to have one common direction in the team’s thought process, we came together, discussed, and came up with the Fish-Bone diagram which helped

us to list the various dissatisfactions leading to the wastage of food. 

IMPROVE After taking into account all the reasons leading to the wastage of food, we had another brainstorming session and came up with possible solutions for both, the students as well as the kitchen. Solutions 1.     Get a proper feedback system for information flow as per the scheduling of room treats and special snacks being sold in sips and bites. Based on the information, the food cooked for those sessions can be reduced. 2.     Fixing a menu is very important as the students will be aware of the items being served and based on the data collected, the cooks will know which items to cook less and which to increase. 3.     Change/extend Gmail and online shopping timings. This will ensure that students don’t miss out on breakfast/lunch sessions to make full use of the limited time given to them. 4.     Shifting the Breakfast timing from 7:30 am-8:00 am to 7:45 am- 8:15 am especially during the sports season as this makes sure that the students are ready and attend the breakfast session within the given time. 5.     Having a calendar that highlights Sundays and Festival days gives the cooks clarity as to the days where they can cook lesser as, on those days, most of the students meet their parents and have food with them.   During the brainstorming, we came up with about 50 other ideas but decided to exclude the others as they were not feasible or costly.     CONTROL     ·        To ensure that the solutions we gave are put to use and also sustained, we have decided to do GEMBA in the month of December to compare the improvements if any. ·        The control charts show us the days where the wastage is going above the upper limit. Now, looking at those days, we track it to the food items on those particular days and monitor those food items more carefully. ·        Monitoring the menu on a daily basis will help us track the making of those food items which are least liked and we can change the menu accordingly.   Limitations ·        We could not measure the wastage in kilograms/liters because of the mismatch and availability of time. ·        Our observation and study was just for the month of August due to lack of time and also other academic and non-academic commitments.   Food wastage is of major concern in our country and thousands of people go to bed hungry. We must realize the value of what we get and be grateful for the food and not waste it. Our team is making a humble effort in this direction by tracking the wastage, giving appropriate solutions, and monitoring the process thereof.