Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) is one of the largest initiatives Guckenheimer, an on-site corporate restaurant management and catering company, has undertaken. CPI is based on seven steps to analyze barriers to performance improvement, prioritize the barriers, and develop a plan to overcome them. The ultimate goal of CPI is to improve profit margins.
Program Details
The seven steps include:
- Map the current process to provide a high-level understanding of boundaries, major steps, and potential barriers.
- Develop metrics with targets in order to create clarity of objectives, organizational focus, and accountability.
- Identify and analyze barriers through a root-cause analysis process.
- Create a barrier removal plan that includes the 3 Ws (what, who, when).
- Create an Action Improvement Plan.
- Link actions to results.
- Share lessons learned across the company.
The idea of CPI was a new concept for Guckenheimer management. The training process started at the top with a seminar for the Executive group. Once the Executive group bought into the process, a curriculum for live classes was developed, along with workbooks, activities, and role-plays. Live classes were held in seven geographic areas with 93 percent of the target audience completing the training in that fiscal year.
The training included a Level 3 evaluation process as each participant was required to document how he or she used the process to address a real-life operational problem. The completed exercise was evaluated by the CPI team and feedback provided to the participants. In some cases, the CPI team visited the site where the exercise was completed to provide additional coaching and feedback.
Results
Examples of the process improvement projects completed by the attendees include:
- 5 percent improvement over the year-to-date food cost percentage
- Eliminating temporary labor
- Increasing ServSafe Certification compliance to 90 percent
- Shortening the length of the hiring process
Future plans for the training include developing a condensed version of the training for front-line supervisors and including CPI training as part of Guckenheimer’s Unit Leader Orientation classroom training session.
